Hi Anne:
I just came across the following article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Takes_a_Village
I was confused by the ghostwriter’s lament over a lack of acknowledgment. Isn’t the whole idea behind a ghostwriter, well, to be invisible? It really sounds like Clinton was going for complete ownership of the project and the writer’s fee that she was paid seems to be reflective of this.
What’s your take on it? Am I being horribly naive here or is a ghostwriter supposed to get some kind of acknowledgment in the final product?
Best Regards,
Angela West
Hi Angela:
I almost didn’t publish the link because H. Clinton can generate such controversy. But I agree with you. If the numbers reported in the wikipedia article are correct, and they very well may be, the ghost was adequately paid and should have kept her mouth shut.
Getting paid and giving all credit to the author is what ghostwriters do. If we’re lucky, we will get some sort of an acknowledgement. I’ll even suggest that my name be mentioned if the person I’m working for seems to want to do something more than pay me, but I never ever demand it.
What we don’t know is how the contract was drafted. In include statements that the named author retains all rights, including the right to be named as sole author. I suspect many other ghosts do the same thing in one form or another.
There is some thinking that there’s something dishonest about ghostwriting or hiring a ghost to write a book. I don’t think it’s a problem because its such a time-honored tradition.
I do caution the people I write for that with the internet it probably will be impossible to keep the fact of the ghostwriting secret if my client gains true notoriety. So far that hasn’t happened, but who knows.
By the way, just to provide some balance, maybe, there is this headline over at Huffington Post: Lynn Vincent: Palin Chooses Evangelical Magazine Editor To Co-Write Memoir
Co-authorship is different. Although the co-author usually does all the writing just as the ghostwriter does, the co-author’s name appears on the cover and in other places along with the celebrity.
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Thank you for this post Anne. The Barbara Feinman / Hillary Clinton ghostwriting debacle is an extremely rare case. I have been a ghostwriter for more than 16 years, and worked on 31 commercially published books. My client “authors” have appeared on Oprah, in Publisher’s Weekly and Amazon’s bestseller list. Never once have I come forward to “declare” that the author credited on the cover of the book did not actually write the book – that would be unethical and a breach of the ghostwriting agreement. It is believed that more than 70% of books published each year are ghostwritten – it is a common business practice of the publishing industry. If a writer wants to receive credit, than the hired writer works as a “co-author”. In the Feinman case, it appears this is how her original agreement was constructed and somewhere along the way she was relegated to ‘hidden’ status and wasn’t going to go quietly.
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Hi Laura, good to have you here. I didn’t know the number was as high as 70%, but it doesn’t surprise me. And yes, it’s rare for a ghost to break their promise of staying anonymous.
Ghostwriting is NOT for every writer. You most likely will not receive credit for the work, hence the term “ghostwriter.” I agree also agree that 70% of books are ghostwritten. I’m sure there are some talented celebrities out there who can write, but come on, the majority of them use a ghostwriter.
Most writers allow their ego to get in the way of their work. Writers who cannot let go of of the fact that they will not receive acknowledgment for their work may want to leave ghostwriting to writers who are happy to write and get paid for it. The other alternative is to co-author a book, but again, the ego can get in the way of this as well.
Rebecca – well said!
“Time-honored” or not, there is in my mind an instinctive revulsion to learn that someone has been taking sole credit for another’s writing. I can’t blame the ghost writer–we do have to pay the bills and feed the kids. Lack of credit is something else. If the contract says the ghost is a ghost, so be it. If you sign it, you keep your mouth shut. I suspect Feinman was given verbal assurances that she’d be credited (“No PROBlem, Babs-baby!”), only to get the old razzle-dazzle at contract time, after she’d already bought the Maserati.
I also find repellent the false pretense that the famous person is capable of writing an entire book when they’re not. This is, pardon the expression, a LIE.
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Maybe because I ghost I have no revulsion at all
The lack of credit doesn’t bother me a whit… probably because I have a bunch of my own stuff published as well.