With Halloween on the horizon, I’ve been thinking about ghosts. Ghost writers, that is.
Ghost writers aren’t spirits or spooks but real writers who, either because they can’t get their own books published or because they see an opportunity to sell more books and make more money by writing a more famous person’s story, become behind-the-scenes writers for others.
Readers are attracted to books about famous people. In the public’s eyes, celebrities live much more fascinating lives than the rest of us, but these stars of our universe don’t usually have the writing skill or the time to write a book. So famous people may pay professional scribes to write their stories for them and go away quietly to cash their checks and let the celebrities take the credit. And everybody is happy.
You’ve probably read some ghost-written books, maybe without noticing or realizing it.
Often the celebrity’s deal with the ghost writer is that the ghost will get paid but get no credit for writing the book. However, those who want to dig around online to find out when the big name personalities aren’t the real authors of their life stories.
Paris Hilton, American socialite and heiress of the Hilton Hotels fortune, supposedly wrote her own story in Paris: The Memoir, but the book was actually written by ghostwriter Joni Rodgers.
Spare, published in 2022 as a memoir by England’s royal renegade Prince Harry, sold 1.43 million copies in its first 24 hours, creating a Guiness World Record for the fastest-selling non-fiction book of all time. Harry wanted the world to know how badly he was treated by the Royal Family and the world in general, but he isn’t a writer, though his name alone is on the cover. But he actually turned the job over to journalist/novelist/ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer. Not caring for whining, I didn’t read the tell-all myself.
Michele Obama published her book, Becoming, in 2018. Like Harry, she put her own name on the cover, because it would sell books. And the ads for the memoir say it’s by Michelle Obama. But that’s false advertising. It was written by a so far unnamed ghost writer. Must be a state secret.
Nineteen Steps, which I may actually read, is from the family history of actress Millie Bobby Brown, who “writes” about her grandmother’s survival of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster in London in 1943. Acclaimed as “one of the best celebrity books to come out in 2023,” the cover advertises only the name of Millie Bobby Brown. It was actually written by British ghost writer Kathleen McGurl.
Only a few celebrities have written their own books. Among them are Matthew McConaughey, Sharon Stone and Barack Obama. Apparently Barack can write but was too busy to help Michelle.
Some ghost-written books claim to be autobiographies, such as Miley Cyrus: Miles to Go. But since “auto” means “self,” it isn’t an auto-biography if Miley didn’t write it. Ghost writer Hilary Luftin did the job.
One way to tell that your superstar didn’t write his own story is that the book cover may say something like The Story of My Life by Bubba Stoops (I made that up). But at the bottom, you see “with John Smith.” Sometimes that with means that John helped Bubba, and sometimes it means Bubba thought he could make a killing telling his story, but he flunked English 101, so he hired John, who passed English and did write all of Bubba’s best-seller. Bubba just showed up grinning at the book signings.
Though they often get overlooked in the credits, ghost-writers get perks. They get to see their writing in print, which might not happen under their own names. It’s their style and creativity that readers are enjoying. And they get paid.
A beginning ghoster can expect to earn between $2,000 and $9,000 for a book. Unless you love to write, it’s not worth it. With a fair amount of experience, you might earn $30,000 - $60,000. With several best-sellers under your belt, or if you’re represented by an agent, you might be looking at a six-figure payoff. That is worth it!
Some big name ghosters can earn as much as seven figures. Check out The Autobiography of Malcolm X, credited not to Malcolm X but to Alex Hailey. Already an accomplished and popular writer of the phenomenally successful book Roots, Hailey died in 1992. But he probably earned enough just from the Malcolm X “autobiography” alone to bury himself in high style.
So take a pass on the really spooky stuff this Halloween. Instead, lurk under your reading lamp eating your treat-or-treat goodies with a good ghost-written book!
