I’ve been puzzling for the past two days, since the latest plagiarism / ghostwriting scandal hit social media, about why I find the use of ghostwriters to create fiction so disturbing. After all, I’ve been a ghostwriter myself, many times. I’ve written letters, articles, reports, white papers, and many other government and commercal documents that would go out with some one else’s name on them. After one particular Government Budget, I wrote articles that would appear in the same publication for opposing sides: one by a bishop and the other by a financial planner.
I also have friends who are ghostwriters: who take the stories that other people have to tell and craft the words that make them come alive in a reader’s head. Sports people, politicians, victims of crime, mountaineers, ladies of pleasure — all sorts of people have their names on autobiographies or how to books that were written for them.
So why shouldn’t a busy person pay someone else to turn their idea into a novel that they then publish under their own name?
I’ve mulled it over, and I’ve come to a conclusion. It’s a lie and a cheat.
If you’re a pop star, and you want to produce a book about your life or your craft or your favourite recipes, the concepts the book presents are all yours. The book is presenting you. Even if the words are provided by someone else, you are not deceiving the reader. They’re getting what they set out to get — a book that tells your story, or shares your knowledge, or lets them cook the food you like to eat.
When I sell you a fiction book with my name on it, I’m doing something fundamentally different. I am selling you something with a particular voice, a way of building character, a type of descriptive writing, a tone and style that comes from being written by me. My stories are all different, of course, but they carry the same hallmarks. If you buy a Jude Knight story, you expect to read a Jude Knight story — and you will. I write my own books.
I am an author because I write my own books.
The celebrity who has a ghostwriter write their autobiography is not an author and isn’t claiming to be; they’re a celebrity with their name on a book about them. If that book is about their experience as a round-the-world solo yachtsman and they’ve never been on the ocean in their life, then they’re a liar — not because someone else wrote their book, but because they are misrepresenting who they are.
The person who gets other people to write their fiction books for them is claiming to be an author, and that’s a lie. They are misrepresenting who they are.
But wait, you say, maybe they have written some books. One or two or six. That makes them an author, doesn’t it? Not of the rest of the books they claim, that other people have written, it doesn’t. They’re cheating their reader of the repeat experience of the author’s voice, and to me, that breaks a compact between writer and reader, a trust relationship, that should never be broken.
Most people don’t (and can’t) write a book a month.
So here’s the thing. I don’t publish as often as I’d like. I have various ailments. I have a day job. But even in a perfect world, I wouldn’t publish once a month. If I did, I’d be compromising the quality. I write fast, but I still need time to edit, to proofread, to have the occasional conversation with physical, rather than fictional, people.
And very few people can publish once a month. If you see a writer doing so, be suspicious. There may be a good reason. The amazing Grace Burrowes had a huge number of manuscripts before she published the first, so they came out in quick succession. Others save early books of a series to publish quickly. I plan to do this with the first few books in the Children of the Mountain King series so I can publish one a month for six months. And some people do write fast and have no friends. I’m not saying it can’t be done.
Just be careful out there. It’s a jungle, and I’ve just discovered that it’s full of ghosts.
