Ghost Buster!

Ghost writing is at an all-time high in the publishing industry. For those of you who may have heard the term but never looked into what it meant, simply put, Ghost writing is when somebody writes a book, article, or what-have-you for somebody who cannot write. The Ghost writer gets paid but they are allotted none of the credit. They now have to sign non-disclosure agreements before the publisher will tell them who it is they are to write for (trust me, I’ve had two offers this year)

Sounds kind of like fraud, right?

In any other field that’s what we’d call it. Can I get a Milli Vanilli from the congregation? Amen!

But in publishing? Oh well, that’s just the way it’s done. If some celebrity wants to write a book about weight loss, in steps a Ghost writer. If a tired industry dinosaur that has written twenty, thirty, forty, or more novels already and just doesn’t feel like it? Why retire when their publisher will bring in a Ghost writer to pen some generic story for them? People buy it because, “I just love books by So&So!” No matter if it’s the same old story rewritten, over and over, and over again.

Why would anybody do this, you ask? Money. Pretty sad how often history gives us that answer, huh? No matter how unethical the question those 30 pieces of silver always seem to win. The young writer that wants to break into the dying industry of publishing will take their 15 grand (tempting, again trust me, I know) and hope that they will make the connections to eventually receive the credit for their own work. The publishers win because with so few people reading it is easier to convince those few readers to buy a book by So&So (who they just Love!) than a book by Joe-blow No-Name.

I mean honestly people! There are books being Ghost written by that fictitious TV show character and  ”Murder He Wrote” knock-off “Castle”! And they sell like hotcakes! Nathan Fillion seems like an alright guy for an actor, but a real Nikki Heat novel? Come on, by buying that you just helped crush the dream of an aspiring writer who could have been the next Hemingway. Nice.

What do we blame this phenomenon on? Is there anything we can point at and say it’s at fault for Ghost writing? Because we have to blame it on something. Oh, I know, let’s blame it on the rain, yeah, yeah……