Ghostwriting

For those of you who may not know what ghostwriting is, it having someone write something for you without taking credit for it. It happens in literature a lot more than some realize, and I was curious to hear opinions on the matter. One must, however, take a number of things into consideration. Ghostwriting comes in different degrees. In some instances, someone will hand a writer an outline for a story and have the ghostwriter write it for them. Other people do the writing themselves, then have a ghostwriter rewrite it for them because their own personal skills may not be professional level. A lot of people consider this plagiarism to which I can both agree and disagree, depending on the point of view.

Normally plagiarism involves literary theft, literally stealing what someone else wrote and claiming it as your own original work. The difference with ghostwriting is that the uncredited author knows he's being paid to write without taking credit, so in a way, he's giving his work to someone else for profit.

On the flip side, it could and sometimes is still seen as plagiarism, because someone is claiming work as their own that isn't. It's still a divisive topic in the literary community.

Personal Thoughts: I've thought about having a book ghostwritten. For me, it would be a case of having an entire story I wrote rewritten because my skills aren't at a professional level yet. However, I wouldn't claim it as my own original work. If I did take this route I would have the other author credited as co-author of the work so he could take some of the credit, and yes, even a share of the loot. I suppose it would really be more like a collaboration.

 

I was only aware of ghostwriting in the context of things like autobiographies and other non-fiction where the subject/expert is a poor writer or doesn't have time, or else for genre fiction where the publisher might decide they need a romance with vampires and teenager lovers ready to go in 6 months or whatever. In those cases the ghostwriter would be paid their fee regardless of how well the book sells, and they'd usually be credited somewhere (like with an autobiography the author might be listed as Boy George (with Ghost W Riter) or what have you).

I haven't really heard of an 'ordinary' person hiring a ghost writer to write a fictional story, is this a thing? Considering what even a full edit costs, I imagine the costs must be significant?

 

Ghostwriting is kinda meh in my opinion. It's fine to have a cowriter, but ghostwriting is inherently deceitful. Though I suppose it can backfire, as a bad ghostwriter can make the "author" look really stupid. Still, there's few cases where admitting there's a cowriter isn't better than outright ghostwriting.

Not that I care enough to do anything about it, lol.

 

I used to read a lot of western (cowboy) fiction. Not sure, but I think I may have read every one of Louis L'Amour's books. (Interestingly, Louis early in his career ghost wrote four of the Hopalong Cassidy novels for Clarence Mulford.) After Louis died and there were no new books by him to be had, I tried some of the pulp western series you could find in the rotating racks in airports and newsstands. Most of those were ghostwritten. I've found web sites devoted to two or three of the series, and people somehow have figured out exactly who wrote most of the books. (And most of them were not written by the person whose name appears on the cover.)

 

I guess there are two instances I have issue with. One is celebrities. It comes off as rampant celebrity worship and narcissism. It would be so simple to be forthcoming about the process and include the ghostwriter as a co-writer.

The second instance I don't like is when someone's entire business plan hinges on paying despicable rates. It's not really a ghostwriting specific thing to me though--just any business or person paying writers in slave wages. And then a lot of these people end up with stolen material from their ghostwriters because who wants to write 50k words over 25-50 hours and get paid two dollars an hour? Much easier to just copy and paste and move on and I really have no issue with people who pay slave wages getting bit in the ass like that. It's also why all these silly article sights (*ehem* Buzzfeed) are just copy paste reddit posts or silly lists with images because no one can justify writing something that takes more than ten minutes. I've been there and done it and came away feeling like I just traded my body for a few dollars thrown on the ground by my john--sorry client.

And alright, I guess there is a third type that seems scummy. These days a lot of writers are on social media interacting with fans more like friends. They'll make comments about their process, give updates on WIP, how their scenes are going, etc. That is just a little weird to me when the person is using ghostwriters. Plus, I've seen it blow up in their face for the reasons I listed above. A ghostwriter steals material, then the "author" gets called a thief and either has to admit to plagiarism or using ghostwriters. The (ex)fans are never happy.