1 Ghostwriter’s Best Gentle Reminder

I recently was reminded that I am a ghostwriter.

You might think, Well, no shit, Sherlock!

I prefer to look at it like the old aftershave commercials from the 1970s, “Thanks, I needed that.”

And I have my business advisor to thank.

I have many standard fee requests in my contracts. Besides the dollar amount, I want a free copy of the published work, a testimonial for my website and social media, and the right to use the book’s title, cover art, and summary in my marketing. This means I can write blogs about it and post information on my website and on social media.

The vast majority of prospects are okay with this, and they become clients as we move past the contract stage and start working together. As I wrote in a recent post (https://leebarnathan.com/blog/when-2-prospects-mess-with-contracts/), I came up against a prospect who objected to my using any information for marketing purposes.

His reasoning was that he was afraid that his and the story’s credibility would be called into question if it became known that he had used a ghostwriter. He was especially sensitive to this because he wanted his story to benefit a group of youths.

I told him that the reality is that between 50% and 90% of nonfiction books are ghostwritten. That’s true not just for celebrity memoirs, but non-celebrity memoirs (I’ve ghostwritten a few) but also for business books written by CEOs who are famous and not famous; and for people who are giants in their industries but unknown outside of them, such as restaurateurs, chefs, CFOs, and even farmers.

These people have their own interesting, compelling, and motivating stories to tell. They just need help in getting them told. Their stories are no less true than this guy’s story is, and when the book is out, nobody’s going to care that the listed author didn’t write the book. All that matters is that the story is good enough to tell.

Nobody cared that J.R. Moehringer ghostwrote Phil Knight, Andre Agassi and Prince Harry’s memoirs. They certainly didn’t lose any fame or fortune because of it. The BBC, meanwhile, reported that Moehringer was stalked and harassed by the press and paparazzi after it leaked out that he was Harry’s ghostwriter.

But none of that mattered because his mind was made up. 

I told this to my business advisor.

“I’m going to give you a point of view you’re not going to like,” he began. “I believe it’s called a ghostwriter. It’s not called a collaborator, it is not called a co-author. You are a ghostwriter. If a client says he’s fine for you to promote your business, then ‘Thank you very much.’ But that is not the expectation.”

It took a day for me to wrap my head around his bluntness, but I realized he was right.

A collaborator is an expert who brings that expertise to the book. A ghostwriter brings writing expertise to every client and project, so a ghostwriter could be called a collaborator—provided the client is okay with that. This prospect wasn’t.

A co-author typically is an equal partner to the author. That means the two probably shared in the conceiving, researching, and writing—and they share in the profits. A ghostwriter might share in researching, but the story’s concept is the author’s, and the writing is the ghostwriter’s.

Similar to co-author is co-writer, most commonly is the second name on a book jacket, following the main name and “and” or “with.” That can be the ghostwriter, but not always.

A ghostwriter traditionally is someone who writes and receives no credit. I had encountered so many clients who were willing to accept my credit terms that I forgot about the cases where they didn’t.

My business advisor said I have to ask myself if I want to be a ghostwriter or something else. It’s okay to be something else, he said, I just have to make it clear.

So, I’m making it clear: I’m a ghostwriter.

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