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A ghostwriter* produces material, usually books or articles, which will be published under someone else’s name. Publishers hire ghostwriters to write books for celebrities in various fields like news, entertainment, business and sport.
It works like this. Someone convinces the celebrity that he/ she should write a book by waving a large advance, or offering another inducement, such as the opportunity to get publicity. The celebrity agrees, and the publisher hires a writer, who will gain (limited) access to the celebrity in order to write the book.
The books are published under the celebrity’s name, with no credit given to the ghostwriter. Occasionally you may see a book appear with “as told to” and a writer’s byline, but usually the writer writes in obscurity.
How to get ghostwriting gigs
If you’ve published a couple of books, you can offer your services to publishers as a ghostwriter. Or, you can approach a well-known person and suggest that they might like to “write” a book. If you have an agent, you can suggest to him that you’re up for ghostwriting gigs that he can hunt up for you.
Business people often have writers “ghost” articles for them. These ghostwritten articles are published under the business person’s name, in print or on the Web. I do a lot of ghostwriting for business people in my copywriting practice.
Ghostwriting has its pitfalls, as do most kinds of writing, and I’ll look at those in another blog post.
* Sometimes appears as “ghost writer” online.
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Technorati Tags: ghostwriter, ghost writer, book editor, POD, print on demand, self-publishing
Angela Booth
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
David Ghostwriter 05.27.08 at 7:55 am
Or a writer can approach a freelance ghostwriter agency such as ours. It’s not just famous people who want their life’s story imortalized or have an idea for a fantacy novel or adventure story that is sure to take the world by storm.
The challenge with less famous people, is that they have less to pay, so you need to write more books…and there is more supply (of writers) than demand (of authors) …unless you call tire-kicking demand! Yes, plenty of tire kickers, plenty of them.
john from the copywriting agency 05.31.08 at 5:34 am
Yeah, and ghostwriting extends to the trashy true-life magazine articles too - “My husband ate his own leg” and similar, so there’s plenty of work out there. Getting noticed by the right people is always the hard bit though!
As long as you don’t mind not having your name on a piece of work, ghostwriting can be a good source of income.
I’d recommend it as an area for existing writers to move into rather than people with no experience to start in - unless they’ve got unprecedented access to Michael Jackson or something!