Product Code Database
A ghostwriter is a person hired to write literature or journalism works, speeches, or other texts that are credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit Autobiography, , magazine articles, or other written material.
Memoir ghostwriters often pride themselves in "disappearing" when impersonating others since such disappearance signals the quality of their craftsmanship. In music, ghostwriters are often used to write songs, lyrics, and instrumental pieces. Screenplay authors can also use ghostwriters to either script doctor to improve them. Usually, there is a confidentiality clause in the contract between the ghostwriter and the credited author (or publisher) that obligates the former to remain anonymous, or obligates the latter to not reveal the ghostwriter. Sometimes the ghostwriter is acknowledged by the author or publisher for their writing services, euphemistically called a "researcher" or "research assistant", but often the ghostwriter is not credited.
Ghostwriting (or simply "ghosting") also occurs in other creative fields. Composers have long hired ghostwriters to help them to write musical pieces and songs; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is an example of a well-known composer who was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons. Ghosting also occurs in popular music. A pop music ghostwriter writes lyrics and a melody in the style of the credited musician. In hip hop music, the increasing use of ghostwriters by high-profile hip-hop stars has led to controversy. In the visual arts, it is not uncommon in both fine art and commercial art such as comics for a number of assistants to do work on a piece that is credited to a single artist; Andy Warhol engaged in this practice, supervising an assembly line silk screen process for his artwork. However, when credit is established for the writer, the acknowledgment of their contribution is public domain and the writer in question would not be considered a ghostwriter.
Ghostwriters are hired for numerous reasons. In many cases, celebrities or public figures do not have the time, discipline, or writing skills to write and research a several hundred-page autobiography or "how-to" book. Even if a celebrity or public figure has the writing skills to pen a short article, they may not know how to structure and edit a several hundred-page book so that it is captivating and well-paced. In other cases, publishers use ghostwriters to increase the number of books that can be published each year under the name of well-known, highly marketable authors, or to quickly release a topical book that ties in with a recent or upcoming newsworthy event.
However, the recent shift into the digital age (15–20% world market share of books by 2015) has brought some changes, by opening newer markets that bring their own opportunities for authors and writers—especially on the more affordable side of the ghostwriting business. One such market is the shorter book, best represented at the moment by Amazon's Kindle Singles imprint: texts of 30,000 words and under. Such a length would have been much harder to sell before digital reader-technologies became widely available, but is now quite acceptable. Writers on the level of Ian McEwan have celebrated this recent change, mainly for artistic reasons.
As a consequence, the shorter format makes a project potentially more affordable for the client/author. Manhattan Literary, a ghostwriting company, states that "book projects on the shorter side, tailored to new markets like the Kindle Singles imprint and others (30,000–42,000 words) start at a cost of $15,000". And this shorter book appears to be here to stay. It was once financially impractical for publishers to produce such novella-length texts (they would have to charge too much); but this new market is, by 2015, already substantial and has been projected to be a solid part of the future of book publishing. So, with its appearance the starting price for the professional book writer has come down by about half, but only if this shorter format makes sense for the client.
On the upper end of the spectrum, with celebrities that can all but guarantee a publisher large sales, the fees can be much higher. In 2001, The New York Times stated that the fee that the ghostwriter for Hillary Clinton's memoirs would receive was probably about $500,000 of her book's $8 million advance, which "is near the top of flat fees paid to collaborators".
A recent availability also exists, of outsourcing many kinds of jobs, including ghostwriting, to Offshoring locations like India, China, and the Philippines where the customer can save money. The true tests of credibility—the writer's track record, and samples of his or her craft—become even more important in these instances, when the writer comes from a culture and first language that are entirely different from the client's.
In some cases, ghostwriters are allowed to share credit. For example, a common method is to put the client/author's name on a book cover as the main byline (by a uthor's) and then to put the ghostwriter's name underneath it (with ghostwriter's). Sometimes this is done in lieu of pay or to decrease the amount of payment to the book ghostwriter for whom the credit has its own intrinsic value. Also, the ghostwriter can be cited as a co-author of a book, or listed in the movie or film credits when having ghostwritten the script or screenplay for film production.
For nonfiction books, the ghostwriter may be credited as a "contributor" or a "research assistant". In other cases, the ghostwriter receives no official credit for writing a book or article; in cases where the credited author or the publisher or both wish to conceal the ghostwriter's role, the ghostwriter may be asked to sign a nondisclosure contract that legally forbids any mention of the writer's role in a project. Some have made the distinction between "author" and "writer", as ghostwriter Kevin Anderson explains in a Washington Post interview: "A ghostwriter is an interpreter and a translator, not an author, which is why our clients deserve full credit for authoring their books."
In some cases, such as with some "how-to" books, diet guides, or cookbooks, a book will be entirely written by a ghostwriter, and the celebrity (e.g., a well-known musician or sports star) will be credited as author. Publishing companies use this strategy to increase the marketability of a book by associating it with a celebrity or well-known figure. In several countries before elections, candidates commission ghostwriters to produce autobiographies for them so as to gain visibility and exposure. One of John F. Kennedy's books ( Profiles in Courage) is almost entirely credited to ghostwriters. Donald Trump's autobiography was produced by a ghostwriter. Several of Hillary Clinton's books were produced by ghostwriters. Nelson Mandela's autobiography ( Long Walk to Freedom) was also produced by a ghostwriter.
A consultant or career-switcher may pay to have a book ghostwritten on a topic in their professional area, to establish or enhance their credibility as an "expert" in their field. For example, a successful salesperson hoping to become a motivational speaker on selling may pay a ghostwriter to write a book on sales techniques. Often this type of book is published by a self-publishing press (or "vanity press"), which means that the author is paying to have the book published. This type of book is typically given away to prospective clients as a promotional tool, rather than being sold in bookstores.
Additionally, publishers use ghostwriters to write new books for established series where the "author" is a pseudonym. For example, the purported authors of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, "Carolyn Keene" and "Franklin W. Dixon", respectively, are actually pseudonyms for a series of ghostwriters who write books in the same style using a template of basic information about the book's characters and their fictional universe (names, dates, speech patterns), and about the tone and style that are expected in the book (for more information, see and ). In addition, ghostwriters are often given copies of several of the previous books in the series to help them match the style.
The estate of gothic novelist V. C. Andrews hired ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman to continue writing novels after her death, under her name and in a similar style to her original works. Many of action writer Tom Clancy's books from the 2000s bear the names of two people on their covers, with Clancy's name in larger print and the other author's name in smaller print. Various books bearing Clancy's name were written by different authors under the same pseudonym. The first two books in the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell franchise were written by Raymond Benson under the pseudonym David Michaels.
Sometimes famous authors will ghostwrite for other celebrities, such as when H. P. Lovecraft ghostwrote "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" (also known as "Under the Pyramids") for Harry Houdini in Weird Tales in the 1920s.
Michel-Louis Guérard des Lauriers, one of the Vatican's leading theologians of that time, was responsible for the critical study of the New Mass of Pope Paul VI, commonly known as the Ottaviani Intervention, after the supposed attribution to Cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani and Antonio Bacci. The Vatican later answered these accusations and Cardinal Ottaviani later regretted that his name was misused to berate the pope."Je regrette seulement que l'on ait abusé de mon nom dans un sens que je ne désirais pas, par la publication d'une lettre que j'avais adressée au Saint-Père sans autoriser personne à la publier" ( Christophe Geffroy and Philippe Maxence, Enquête sur la messe traditionnelle (with preface by Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler) p. 22)
Plagiarism researcher Michael V. Dougherty has shown how convoluted the sources of ecclesiastical ghostwriting can be, noting that they are often plagiarized as well as being ghostwritten. The priest Thomas Rosica – himself a proven plagiarist – was the ghostwriter for several speeches by Marc Ouellet. "In an unusual twist," wrote Dougherty, "one of the same source texts extensively copied by Rosica for Cardinal Ouellet reappeared in an unoriginal homily by William Levada." Levada was at the time the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
There are ghostwriting companies and that sell entrance essays, term papers, theses and dissertations to students. Such services are commonly known as "".
Although academic ghostwriting involves the sale of academic texts that are written on demand, it differs from plagiarism in that it does not involve an undisclosed appropriation of existing texts. As opposed to cases of plagiarism that stem from a copy-and-paste reuse of previous work, essays and assignments that are obtained through ghostwriting services as a rule have the originality of their text confirmed by plagiarism detection software packages or online services that are widely used by universities.
Universities have developed strategies to combat such academic services, which can be associated with academic fraud, that are offered to students and researchers. Some universities allow professors to give students on papers which a professor believes to be ghostwritten. If the student is unfamiliar with the content of an essay that he or she has submitted, then the student can be charged with academic fraud.
medical writing can write papers without being listed as authors of the paper and without being considered ghostwriters, provided their role is acknowledged. The European Medical Writers Association have published guidelines which aim to ensure professional medical writers carry out this role in an ethical and responsible manner. The use of properly acknowledged medical writers is accepted as legitimate by organisations such as the World Association of Medical Editors and the British Medical Journal. Moreover, professional medical writers' expertise in presenting scientific data may be of benefit in producing better quality papers.
Some celebrities, executives, or public figures set up blog websites—sometimes as a marketing, public relations, or lobbying tool. However, since these individuals are typically too busy to write their blog posts, they hire discreet ghostwriters to post to the blog under the celebrity or executive's name. As with nonfiction ghostwriting, the blog ghostwriter models their writing style, content and tone on that of the credited author. This goes for social media as well. Many public figures have ghostwriters at least partially handle their Facebook and Twitter accounts, among others.
The practice is also common in television, as composers listed on cue sheets are entitled to music royalties every time an episode or theme score appears on television. A 1998 investigation by The Hollywood Reporter revealed that it was especially prevalent among animation companies such as Saban Entertainment, DiC, Ruby-Spears Productions and Hanna-Barbera, which often listed company executives as musicians for the purpose of royalties."Composers say they're paupers in royalty game" – The Hollywood Reporter (1998) In the late 1990s, several composers threatened a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Saban Entertainment president Haim Saban, for allegedly taking ownership and credit for their musical compositions.
Legal disputes have arisen when musical ghostwriters have tried to claim royalties when an allegedly ghostwritten song becomes a money-making hit. In 1987, Darryl Neudorf was asked to work on a project for Nettwerk Productions involving newly signed artist Sarah McLachlan. This recording, the album Touch, resulted in garnering the interest of Arista Records. She signed a multi-album contract with them and two of the songs that Neudorf worked on with her became commercial hits in Canada. In 1991, Neudorf was invited to work with McLachlan again on her second album, Solace. In 1993, he filed a lawsuit against McLachlan and her label, alleging that he had made a significant and uncredited contribution to the songwriting on Touch, and alleging that he was not paid properly for work done on Solace. The judge in the suit eventually ruled in McLachlan's favour on the songs; stating that although Neudorf may have contributed to the songwriting, neither regarded each other as joint authors. The judge ruled in Neudorf's favour on the payment issue.
In hip hop music, the increasing use of ghostwriters by high-profile hip hop stars has led to controversy. Critics view the increasing use of hip hop ghostwriters as the "perversion of hip-hop by commerce." This is because of the limiting definition of "rapping" as "expressing yourself through your own words, not someone else's." Chuck D of Public Enemy thinks this point of view is mistaken because "not everyone is equipped to be a lyricist and not everyone is equipped to be a vocalist." He points out that creating a rap song may require multiple talents. Frank Ocean started his career as a ghostwriter for artists such as Justin Bieber, John Legend and Brandy Norwood.
Currently in hip-hop, the credit given to ghostwriters varies: "silent pens might sign confidentiality clauses, appear obliquely in the liner notes, or discuss their participation freely." In some cases, liner notes credit individuals for "vocal arrangement", which may be a euphemism for ghostwriting. In the early 2010s, hip-hop ghostwriting services like Rap Rebirth appeared online, which provide recording artists who wish to purchase ghostwritten rhymes a greater degree of anonymity.
|
|
