What Ghostwriting Is

Happy Leap Day! If it's an extra day, why is it called "Friday" this year?

Like most people, I used to think ghostwriting was limited to anonymous authoring of someone else's book. Not true! Ghostwriting is a special condition of writing involving partial or no author credit for the writer. Any kind of writing. It can take place with the writer as an employee, under a work for hire agreement, as a freelance and with or without a contract.

More is at stake, however than just the credit of authorship. Other considerations, as attorney Ivan Hoffman points out, are rights retained and other payments like residuals (royalties in the case of a traditionally published sold book.) I disagree with Hoffman's assessment that negotiations and contracting may be limited to two or three parties (plus attorneys), because an agent may also fingerprint the procedures.

Just getting to the ghosting may involve many hurdles. A recent potential client insisted that I physically sign an extremely tight nondisclosure agreement simply to provide a free sample of my editing skills. You'll note that I am not identifying the client even by gender. That's how tight!

What else besides a book might be ghosted? Executive profiles, puff pieces placed in trade or association publications, web page content, blog posts, and serial formulaic fiction like mysteries, romances and westerns that come out under a publisher's pseudonym but written by many authors.

For years the acknowledged queen resource has been Eva Shaw's Ghostwriting: For Fun & Profit (Writeriffic Writer's), originally published in 1991 as Ghostwriting: How to get into the Business. Either title can help you deal with a ghostwriter or become one.