Ghostwriting is the term used to describe a writing project that is undertaken by one or more people but is credited to a different person.
In other words, the creator of the work is the Ghostwriter, but the entire project is attributed to a different publicly named author. The Ghostwriter's name will not appear anywhere in the publication
Today I will show you which writers use ghostwriters.
Nearly 60% of all nonfiction best sellers written in the last three decades are actually ghost-written. The most popular authors who use ghostwriters are Michael Crichton, Ian Fleming, and Tom Clancy.
The author of the study put it down to two simplified people want to hear the stories of celebrities, and these famous people either lack the skill or the time the write the books themselves
Your goal as a ghostwriter is to provide as accurate service as possible without drawing attention to the fact that you are not the author.
You need to seamlessly adapt your writing skills to focus on your client's needs, carry out their vision, and produce a manuscript that suits their style and the content that I need
Why do authors use ghostwriters?
Authors use ghost riders for a wide variety of reasons
They lack the expertise and contacts
For example, if you are a celebrity you may well have a publicist or an agent who wants to promote your brand. However they know you're not capable of writing a book yourself, so they'll get a ghostwriter who has experience in your field to write your book for you.
They are too close to the topic
Sometimes you can be too close to a topic and familiarity breeds contempt, its sometimes difficult to separate yourself and look at it from a reader's point of view.
Sometimes authors have other deadlines they need to meet
Sometimes beating authors take on too many projects and as a consequence, they have to produce a high-quality product in a short period of time. Working with ghostwriter will provide them the quantity speed and convenience you need
English is not their first language.
If you're from Far East Africa or the Middle East or even South America or Central America, English may not be your first language. However, there's a huge market in English speaking-countries for books using a ghostwriter helps authors get over this issue.
Is ghostwriting legal?
Despite what some people may think, ghostwriting is legal. It only becomes a problem when writers follow ethical practices and tell outright lies.
For example, some academic students have been known to hire ghostwriters for their doctoral thesis. It's ethically acceptable to get a ghost to do some light research to proofread or even the ghost editor thesis. However, paying someone to write it for you is not.
If you bring a book to a publisher and claim to have written the whole thing but it's ghostwritten, then you're not only misleading your readers but you're misleading the publisher and it becomes an ethical more than a legal question.
Let's say you are a life-long supporter of a specific football club and you want to contextualize your life's experience as well as provide guides for other supporters.
The ghostwriter doesn't know the first thing about the football club you support. They lack your years of wisdom and experience despite producing a while research and useful manuscript that they got paid for the ghostwriter is happy and can with a clear conscience walk away from the project
However, this is what ghostwriting can be viewed as slightly unethical. Say for example if someone starts a new business or makes an investment on the back of a ghost-written publication especially when the author claims to be an authority on a specific topic. As a result of following unethical advice a person loses money and potentially a lot more.
How much do ghostwriters charge per word?
Anyone who works in the ghostwriting field will tell you there is no standard rate. It will largely depend on the type of project and a number of other variables
For example, you can choose to charge per project or per word. Depending on the size of the project and its complexity ghostwriter work for anything from 15c a word to four dollars a word.
For example, experienced ghostwriters whether they're writing nonfiction or fiction manuscript, you should decide whether to charge by the project or by the word depending on the size of the project. Anything below 50,000 words is usually charged per word. I didn't hear about that it's charged on a project basis
How much to charge will be dictated by a number of factors
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How much time I have to commit to the project. For example, if you're writing a 70,000-word book and it involves extensive research on a topic, you may not be usually familiar with then people tend to charge more for these projects.
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The experience of the ghostwriter. Especially those who have a long history of writing successful books will obviously lead to them charging more.
- How long the project will take. Obviously, the more time you spend writing the more you're going to charge. Books will cost more than blog posts.
6 famous authors who use ghostwriters
After reading it about why people use Ghostwriter it's hardly surprising that ghostwriting is becoming increasingly prevalent in the industry even to the stage where famous authors have been known to use ghost writers.
Here are six you might know:
- Michael Crichton
- Ian Fleming
- Tom Clancy
- Robert Ludlum
- James Patterson
- Alexandre Dumas
Does Stephen King use a ghostwriter?
One of the most famous stories about ghostwriting surrounded Stephen King. A funny story is far more complicated than you might think
Instead of Stephen King actually hiring ghostwriters, he did a lot of ghostwriting himself when he decided to distance himself from the fame and pressure of writing under his own name.
He decided that he wanted to create a series of pseudonyms and to do so, he created a fake and complex family tree.
Unfortunately when you're a writer with the skills of Stephen King something as simple as this is never going to work. His first ghostwritten work came from his fictitious wife Tabitha King they famously didn't get married in 1971 and Stephen King ghostwrote his first novel under the pseudonym back in 1981.
Despite his best efforts, King became extremely popular and published nine novels as well as a complete history of social activism, completely ruining his attempt to write under the radar
