Week of Jan. 12, 2014 - Ghost Writing

By Joan Whetzel

 

Whenever I hear the word “ghostwriter” it conjures up images of a wispy specter clacking away at a turn-of-the-century typewriter, creating a novel that would even scare Stephen King. Of course, everyone knows that ghost writing bears no resemblance to this ethereal image. But who really understands the job completely.

 

Definition

Ghostwriting is a verb meaning to work as a ghostwriter. Duh! It is also defined as writing an autobiographical or “true” story/book/article on behalf of someone who will be credited as the author. The ghostwriter disappears and gets no credit whatsoever. He or she will, however, get paid – hopefully well enough to compensate for getting no credit. Ghost written material may be fiction or nonfiction, political, religious, academic, medical, music, visual art, a website, a blog, or a blacklisting countermeasure.

 

Who Hires Ghost Writers?

Ghostwriters are usually hired by celebrities, executives, and political leaders to write the and edit their autobiographies and autobiographical articles for magazines and web content. Musical ghostwriters write song lyrics and songs, similar to what occurred with popular music in the 50s and 60s. Sometimes screenwriters and playwrights hire ghostwriters to rewrite and tweak their scripts so that they read better. At other time, ghost writers are hired to clean up documents that already exist, but were written poorly., so basically they’re more like a ghost editor. Sometimes ghost writers are hired to finish another author's work or to take that writer's place to finish out a series of books if that author dies before the contract for the series has been completed. So I guess the original author dictates from the grave. Gives a whole new take on the term "ghost writing."

 

Ghost Writer's Pay

It can take a ghostwriter anywhere from several months to a year or more to research, write, and edit an piece for his or her client, so the pay had better be decent to make the ghost writing worth the effort. Some ghost writers charge by the word for a completed work (about $4 per word) for articles. Books are another story. Advances for a major publisher to ghost write a book for a major figure (the President), can run, on average, $30,000-100,000, where the average flat fee runs about @12,000-50,000 for books slated to sell less copies, depending on the public figure and the publisher. So I guess if you choose your ghost writing jobs well, it can prove quite lucrative. If you don't mind being invisible.