Ethics of Ghostwriting?

[HalcyonFlower]

At the end of the day, ghostwriting is about earning money or about favours. That's what I think anyway. In the past year, I worked as a Freelance Writer, sometimes do projects time to time now, and one of the most enjoyable aspects of the jobs was ghostwriting novellas. Most of my clients were those who wanted erotica written and another wanted one about the Law of Attraction. I wrote in a manner that I wouldn't become attached to the characters but many of my colleagues did.

I've read many opinions of other Freelance Writers regarding selling novels or plots and many weren't happy that their name weren't on the piece they spent a lot of time on. What about the flip-side though? How do you feel when/if you found out that something you read wasn't written by the author themselves? Would you feel betrayed or slightly so?

I feel if it's a celebrity/politician that writes a book, especially when providing commentary on a particular aspect of society, this should be written by them and not outsourced. They have a ridiculous amount of followers who take the person of interest and make those opinions their own. On the fiction side, I'm not as refined in opinion. There are rarely authors I read everything by since they begin sounding the same at some point.

Your thoughts?

[CCtheBrave]

Hmmm, I hadn't really considered the ethics of ghostwriting, but it has come up a few times this weekend. I just talked to a woman who ghostwrites and she told me that she enjoys the freedom and anonymity, although I personally would want credit for my work.

I think you're right that if I were reading commentary or non-fiction, I would want/hope that the content was actually written by the author on the cover, simply because i'm "buying in" to that author's viewpoint and ideals. I agree with you, wholeheartedly!

On the fiction side, I guess what we don't know doesn't hurt us, but I personally wouldn't want to keep reading books from someone whom I found out was using a ghostwriter. I mean, that's what anthologies are for, right?

[HalcyonFlower]

Glad you agree on the non-fiction side of it! Since there's so much personal experience used usually to make a point, I would hope it's consistent and true since the author would be sharing an intimate part of their lives with us. If that makes sense?

True, that's what anthologies are for. I think people who are required to write SO MANY in a short amount of time may lean onto ghostwriting. I remember being disappointed when finding out about R.L. Stine using a ghostwriter. But it wasn't a major blow since there were so many released in a year that it made sense. Sometimes I wondered about Stephan King considering his numbers but I don't know. Maybe he's super talented at speed writing.

[moderntimes]

As most of us know, very few celebs actually write their own books. One superb exception is Kirk Douglas, who wrote his own bio "Ragman's Son" (a great book!) mostly while filming Spartacus and The Vikings. He used a very primitive portable computer but he wrote his own book, every word.

Most celeb books will say "as told to..." or "with..." and the co-writer's name. This isn't precisely ghostwriting because the "helping" author's name is clearly listed. Exactly how much was written by the celeb vs the "non-ghost" is usually not disclosed, but you can usually tell depending on whether the celeb is capable of speaking two coherent English sentences in a row.

In most cases, the primary celeb will provide notes or a diary or careful interviews with the actual writer, then review and work hand-in-hand with the co-writer and most may really work hard on this. Bill O'Reilly is one of these -- after all, he was an experienced professor and is quite well educated.

As for real ghostwriting? I certainly cannot consider doing this myself. Call if vanity if you wish, but I just wouldn't be pleased to see something I'd written appear under someone else's name. I just don't need the money that much.

Besides, I'm far too busy writing my own novels, book reviews, articles, and so on, for which I'll put the money in my bank, thank you. Simply don't have time to write someone else's stuff for them.

Most of us who've been published are familiar with this -- a casual friend will approach you, saying "I've got a lot of terrific ideas and you're a writer. What if I give you the ideas, you write the stories, and we split the profits?" To which I cordially reply, "Tell you what. You write your ideas, I'll write mine, and we'll each keep the income totally." ha ha

[Richard Falken]

I only find it to be an issue when you are leading the readers to believe that the book was written by somebody who didn't write it. That is pure fraud, no matter how you call it.

[moderntimes]

Correct, Richard. If a ghostwritten book is pretty obviously written by someone else, such as a book from a politician, it's well known that the author is a professional writer. And this is okay, far as I see it, if the writer is listed with "as told to Joe Smith" or "with Jane Doe" but if the author pretends the book is his or hers alone, it's disgusting.

Look at the famed author James Patterson. He's apparently stopped writing his own thrillers and he's employing "assistants" to write the books. Check out the newest Patterson book on Amazon and you'll see the name of someone else at the bottom. Jerk.

[katiesquilts]

I have to admit that I don't understand the concept of ghostwriting... Sure, it's guaranteed employment if you can actually get a gig with a famour author, and you're almost guaranteed that whatever you write will be published, but if you wanted to write with anonymity why wouldn't you just write under a pen name? Then you would get all of the glory and profits, and no one could go back over the books you spent so much time on and cut and paste things at their own whim. Just doesn't make sense to me, personally.

[moderntimes]

I agree, katie. Now I've done editing and review work for both fiction and for scientific & tech papers, but that was strictly a way to pick up a few bucks and my name wasn't important. More recently I did some very extensive editing for a series of engineering specs for safety and environmental regs for a local firm for which I'd worked full time before retiring. And of course a couple of times I've edited a pal's book or essay or whatever for zero pay, as a favor naturally.

Years back when I was writing expose' articles for a local monthly magazine (shady car repair, etc) I used an assumed name for obvious reasons.

But all my fiction short stories and novels, and my nonfiction articles and essays, are under my own name.

Frankly, I'm pretty excited to see my name in print and see my mystery novel on a bookshelf and I'd be pretty chagrined knowing that someone else was stealing the credit.

I understand some folks are okay with this but myself, there's not enough money to get me to do this in the factual world. I work too hard on my novels to spend time writing for someone else. No way.

Nevertheless, it's entirely ethical to ghostwrite if you're paid fairly for this and I have no objections to someone else making money that way.

[HalcyonFlower]

So there's a lot of emphasis on ebook writing with the opinions shared. The thing with ghostwriting is that it also comprises of writing product description, webpages & articles that incorporates copy writing, proposals, essay writing, etc. I can't speak on behalf of those who've written for celebs or students because it's a sector I avoid.

Your name just doesn't get put onto it and that is linked with a particular pride. Personally, when I accept jobs, I don't care if my name isn't put on the piece. Going in, my expectations are that whatever I write is going to be measured by someone else and if they accept, it demonstrates that my writing was good enough. That's the kind of pride that I have - does my writing fit the expectations of clients that are involved in competitive industries? If so, then ego boost right there. Once I give the final product over to the client, it's gone. Even the work were to get famous, then I know what I'm capable of. If I know the site and a person's name hasn't been placed on the work, then I link it to a public portfolio.

I get attached to the work that I put my heart into and if someone ever plagiarized or stole it, I would not be happy. In terms of time management, there was a point in time where I held a standard 8.5 hour job, ghostwrite, and worked on my own things while having the time and energy to have a great social life. It's really dependent on the person.

[moderntimes]

Well, Halcyon, I would not call that ghostwriting. That's just writing for your work, which is completely honorable and respected in its own self.

I wrote tech manuals and specs for years. I wrote an entire user's manual for a high-tech computer aided design & drafting system (CADD) which ran to 5 8.5x11 looseleaf big binders.

Funny story about this... I'd been hired as project manager for this very powerful piece of software, used by design engineers worldwide. It was a rival to the industry leader AutoCad. We had about 500 clients. But the previous manager had really messed up and was let go and I was hired to rebuild the product's reputation and client base. Tough job.

Part of this was a complete revamp of the software, adding many items which the clients had been asking for a long time but the prior manager had not done for them. On a tech note, one major item was what's known as "associative dimensioning" -- let's say you've got a design of a building (this CAD product was mainly used for architectural & structural design) and you've got a column & beam framework that's maybe 12 ft high and 24 ft wide. If you look at the image onscreen, you'll see a boxlike structure with the little lines & arrows indicating the size, with the notations --- 12' --- or --- 24' --- and so on. Now let's say you want to raise the height of the structure 2 ft. So you highlight the vertical columns and "stretch" its height to 14 feet from the original 12. The dimensions shown on the drawing still say "12 ft" so you have to delete them and re-image the commentary lines to match your changes. This is "fixed" by associative dimensioning. If you have that feature in the software, and your change a dimension of the column or beam (columns are vertical, beams are horizontal) then the dimension lettering shown will automatically re-calculate and change automatically.

Anyway, the old manuals were dry and almost unreadable. They would say things like "If the user wishes to rotate the image view, the user must draw a box around the image and then the user must click on the "rotate" icon and select the degree of rotation." on and on, written the the most boring and 19th century manner.

I ripped this all out. I rewrote the whole set of manuals to say things like "To rotate the image, draw a box around the view and click "Rotate" then select the degree of rotation." Very direct, making all the instructions personalized and succinct.

Some of the old timers complained that the clients wouldn't like this. But I stuck to my guns and my rewrite was approved by upper management. And of course, when the clients got the new manuals, they were delighted. "I can finally understand the instructions!"

And later in my "day jobs" I wrote advertising copy and designed logos and ads for our firm, laid out magazine ads, fliers, all sorts of publicity things, also designed and wrote the whole company website. I still occasionally pick up a consulting job, rewriting a user's manual or tech spec, or proofreading existing engineering specs, checking on the math and equations (I'm still pretty handy w. calculus) and so on.

Anyway... writing tech manuals or other assigned writing isn't what I'd call ghosting. I'd define "ghostwriting" as writing on behalf of another person who will use their own name on the text, as if they were the actual author. Which is another thing entirely.

[DATo]

/

I recall, some years ago, a female pop star attending a book trade prize-giving for which her ghosted bestselling memoir had been shortlisted. Before this honour, she boasted she hadn't even opened, still less actually read, the book that bore her name. When she duly won, she left her ghost at the table and graciously collected her prize, all smiles, modesty and gratitude, the model author. When she returned to her publisher's table, the woman who had actually written the book reached out, instinctively, to touch the trophy. Bad move. The star snatched it back, clouting her ghost across the cheek to remind her who was boss. When you pay the piper, you call the tune.

Originally published in TheGuardian

Complete article:
theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/27/bests ... cret-world

[anonanemone]

There is a difference between using a pseudonym and ghostwriting to me. Although some examples blend the two, like Carolyn Keene. I agree that ghostwriting should be at a minimum acknowledged so that the reader is not misled. One exception though may be when the ghostwriting is obvious to everyone. I saw someone add a Rick Castle book on the site a little while back. I was very confused since he is a fictional writer from the show 'Castle'. When I went to Amazon and pulled up the book, there was a picture of Nathan Fillion. No way is Nathan Fillion actually writing these books! Still, I hope there was at least a small note of acknowledgement is included somewhere in the book that the author is in fact fictional and that a real person wrote the book

[moderntimes]

I'm a aware of the fictional "Castle" now writing books. Duh.

On that point, since I write mysteries and they're published, I'm soon headed down to the Houston police HQ to offer my services, to interrogate witnesses and handle crime scene evidence, being a "WRITER". How far do you think I'll get? ha ha

And yeah, using a pen name is different from ghostwriting, same as an actor who uses a stage name. I used a pseudonym when I wrote a series of "undercover" articles exposing fraudulent local businesses. But that's to be understood. I now write under my real name and am happy to do so.

[Connoisseur]

I see nothing wrong with ghostwriting, as long as both parties are in full agreement of the terms. I thought about using a ghostwriter once for my own books, but then decided that only by writing it myself could I convey my ideas AND my style of writing. In other words, I decided to not be lazy or not manage my time poorly and just start writing my way.

[moderntimes]

Of course, using a ghostwriter, they're no longer "your" books, right?

I mean, what's the purpose of being a writer if you're not writing?