Ghostwriting in publishing is a well-known secret. While a book may be written by a famous person (political speech, celebrity autobiography, business book or scientific paper), a different person may have helped with the writing. Ghostwriting has become more popular and controversial in recent years due to a rise in readers wanting authentic texts and the rise of AI making high quality texts easier to create. However, ghostwriting has moved from being a niche profession to a wider debate.
Historical Tradition
Historically, ghostwriting has been used for many centuries. Monarchs had scribes to help with writing, politicians had speech writers, and many famous literary pieces have been heavily edited or worked on together. In the twentieth century, ghostwriting became more professional. Presidents had speech writers, celebrities had ghostwriters and business leaders had ghostwriters. Typically readers knew that the author may not have written every part of the text due to their busy schedule. This was a mutual understanding that while the author may not have written it, they would provide their personal experiences and knowledge or brand, while the ghostwriter would provide their skills.
With the amount of ghostwriting being kept to a minimum, this generally posed no issues. However, nowadays there is a huge rise in non-fiction books. Many books on the list will have an author who simply doesn’t have the time, interest or ability to write a full book. Influencers, athletes and executives commonly have their long form content ghostwritten. Although the argument that the public figure “owns” the content still stands, it is becoming less valid.
Ethical Issues
A key issue is that most readers will assume the author wrote the text. Therefore, if they didn’t, it creates a level of deception within the deal. Supporters of ghostwriting argue that almost every book is a collaboration. Editors will edit manuscripts, researchers will add facts and authors will work together. Demanding single authorship is a romanticised view of how ideas are put into practice.
While this is true, many great books wouldn’t exist if every public figure was required to write independently. However, authors are still valued for who they are and this is reflected in the market. If a reader finds out that a memoir or manifesto was ghostwritten, it changes how they view it. While it may not be a huge effect it does cause issues with the expectation of the author writing the text.
Impact of AI
The rise of powerful generative models has created more issues. With tools that can take an outline, interview or notes and create a coherent piece of text, everyone can essentially become a ghostwriter or traditional ghostwriters can be much more productive. Public figures can create a first draft within minutes and then claim (to various levels of honesty) they wrote it. Professional ghostwriters are also using this to become more productive. This removes the connection between the author and the text.
While this reduces the involvement of humans, it has changed the market. Now that the writing can be done easily, the unique experiences, strategic decisions and commitment to the text are the key scarce resources. This makes it even harder to justify claiming the author wrote it alone and it is harder to justify not disclosing any information.
Acceptable Standards
There is nothing to stop ghostwriting from happening, however it can be made clearer. Certain industries already have semi-transparent standards. Academic papers have authors listed with their roles, some politicians acknowledge their speech writers and a small number of commercial books have ‘with’ authors. Increasing this will help reduce the difference between expectation and reality.
Readers also play a part. It has never been realistic to expect every author to write their text alone. Nor should they be seen as pure branding. The best standard to use is whether the author has contributed meaningfully to the ideas, checked the claims and taken responsibility. If this is the case then having a skilled collaborator (either human or with AI) won’t be a big issue. However if they haven’t then it will simply be branding.
Overall ghostwriting will never go away. There is still a high demand for people to have high quality writing and the tools to help will only get better. However we can be more honest. In a world full of generated texts, the scarce resources will be the human decisions that can be proven. This means authorship should no longer be seen as someone writing it alone but someone taking responsibility. This is still something to protect and should be honestly stated.
Writeic.com is a creative platform dedicated to writers, interview, storytellers, and digital creators who want to inspire the world through words. The authors at Writeic share insights on writing, creativity, storytelling, motivation, success story, and content creation to help readers grow their voice and unlock their creative potential.
