CS4W: How did you start your career as a ghostwriter?
AC: I started as a freelance writer (leaving school in 1970), taking any work that I could find in order to gain experience. I was interviewing a management guru for a magazine at the end of the nineteen eighties and he told me he had been commissioned by a publisher to write three management books. He wanted to publish them because of the publicity they would give his business, but he didn’t have the time to write them himself. He suggested that I wrote them for him, he would have the “glory”, as he put it, and I would have the money, (it was not very much by his standards at the time).
I realized that this was a great way to gather material for books because it was all in one place and could be quickly accessed. It occurred to me that there must be many people out there who wanted to write books and had good stories, but didn’t have the time or the ability to write them themselves.
I started to advertise in the publishing trade press and to write to agents and publishers asking them to pass people on to me. Quite soon after that I was approached by a girl called Zana Muhsen who had been sold by her father as child bride in the Yemen. I wrote her story for her, which we called “Sold”, and it went on to sell four million copies around the world, (and was France’s best selling book of the year). From then on I didn’t have any trouble finding a steady supply of subjects.
CS4W: In your opinion, what is the main reason someone hires a ghostwriter?
AC: The main reason for hiring a ghost is because you know you have a story to tell but don’t have the skills or the time to tell it yourself to a publishable standard. An established ghost can help to find an agent and publisher and get a deal, and then takes away all the stress of the writing. All the client has to do is tell their story, check the material and then promote the book.
CS4W: Do ghostwriters always remain anonymous? Do they ever receive credit?
AC: Sometimes it says “with Andrew Crofts” on the cover or the title page, sometimes there is a thank you in the acknowledgements and sometimes there is nothing. Recently some of the books I have written have been advertised in the trade as being “by the same ghostwriter as …” in order to encourage buyers in the supermarkets and book chains to have confidence in the product, but that is quite unusual. Publishers prefer ghosts to be anonymous in order to give the impression the author wrote it themselves. I don’t actually think the reader cares as long as they enjoy the book.
CS4W: How many books have you ghostwritten? What types of books were they?
AC:I have ghost written over fifty books, mostly autobiographical memoirs, but also business books and occasionally fiction, although that is much harder. The last four autobiographies all went to number one in the Sunday Times bestsellers list in London
CS4W: Once you accept an offer to ghostwrite a book, what is the process? Do you receive an outline to work with?
AC:Normally the process is to start by meeting the author and recording the gist of their story. I then write a synopsis and sample material, which we can use to sell the project to an agent and to publishers. Once the deal is in place we then sit down again with the tape recorder until I have enough material (normally just a couple of days is enough if you can keep them on the subject). I then go home and write the book and two or three months later give them a manuscript to check.
CS4W: How popular is ghostwriting? Do you believe that it may be one of the industry’s best-kept secrets?
AC:I would say close to half of the big selling autobiographies in the charts have been written by ghosts. You just have to look at the authors’ lives and ask yourself if it is likely that they have the time and the ability to do it themselves. If you are a big film star, singer or sportsman, for instance, when are you going to find the time to produce 80,000 or 100,000 words of publishable prose? If you left school at fifteen are you likely to have the skills needed to get a publishing deal?
I don’t think it is that much of a secret any more, just as we know our politicians don’t write their own speeches. It has been going on since the days when most people were illiterate and scribes sat in the marketplaces, offering to write their letters for them.
CS4W: Most people want the recognition of seeing their name on a book cover. What’s it like to see someone else’s name on the cover, when you know the words inside the book are yours?
AC:It’s not a problem if you know that is the deal from the start. Does a car designer at Ford worry that his car has Ford’s name on the back rather than his? That is the job. Unless you are a very big-name author, most people don’t notice the names of authors anyway.
CS4W: When you ghostwrite a book, do you have to sign a confidentiality agreement? If so, how do you secure new projects if the prospective client wants to see what you’ve written before, but you can’t disclose that information?
AC:Yes, sometimes there is a confidentiality agreement, and in the early stages it was annoying not to be able to use published books as examples of my work. Now, however, I have written so many that there are enough where I am credited as the ghost to show around. Most of the authors I meet are not too worried about people in the publishing trade knowing what I have written, even if they don’t want the general public to know. They don’t particularly want to be writers, they just want their stories to be told.
CS4W: What are some of the best and worst aspects of being a ghostwriter?
AC:The best aspect is that every book is different; one month I might be working with a Chinese billionaire in Kuala Lumpur, the next I might be with an abused child on a run down housing estate in England, one moment hanging out with an international supermodel the next with a convicted killer.
It allows me to earn a very good living as a writer without having to do any of the promotion and marketing, which can be very hard (sitting in shops waiting for someone to ask you sign your book, or talking to some radio disc jockey in the middle of the night). All I have to do is listen to fascinating stories and write books – perfect. I can’t think of a bad aspect.
CS4W: What advice would you like to share with our readers who are interested in becoming a ghostwriter, or to those who may be thinking of hiring a ghostwriter?
AC:The best first step would be for them to buy my book “Ghostwriting” published by A&C Black, which will tell them everything they want to know. The next thing the author needs to do is find a ghost who they trust in the same way they trust their lawyer, doctor or therapist. They are going to have to bare their soul, so they need to feel they are in safe hands. My advice to anyone who is interested in being a ghost is find the most interesting person you know and ask them if they would like you to ghost for them, and then just get working.
