Ghostwriting and celebrity books
I hadn’t seen anything by this guy before but he has a lot of insightful things to say on this topic. His name is Jack Edwards:
the complicated ethics of ghostwriters + celebrity books
He points out:
- some celebrities are more transparent than others about their ghostwriters
- saying a book was the fastest selling debut novel when the ghostwriter had actually written prior novels probably isn’t right
- a person who doesn’t usually read might read a book by a celebrity they love and that starts them reading
- celebrity books put money in the hands of bookstores and publishers
- when publishers make more money by publishing celebrity books they can use the extra money to fund debut novelists
- we kind of assume that fiction is written by the person whose name is on the cover but with memoirs we assume there’s a ghostwriter
He uses books with the names Millie Bobby Brown, Zoe Sugg, James Patterson, and Prince Harry on the cover as some of his examples.