You may be thinking that ghost writing is something wrong that celebrities do, hiring a professional writer instead of working on their own books. Actually, no, it’s not illegal, immoral or fattening in any way—except for fattening your purse! It’s done under ‘work for hire’ laws all through the USA and in the world.

 

 

Have you been wondering for a long time about what ghost writers are and exactly what they do?

This blog post is about ghost writing, specifically about my own career as a ghost writer. It may tempt you either into using a ghost writer yourself, or becoming one—if you happen to have the necessary writing and editing skills.

Definition of a ghost writer

Ghost writers are professional freelance writers who work for pay, but who usually don’t take any of the credit for the work they perform for their clients.

We tend to take our pay during the course of completion of a writing project, but sometimes we also take a percentage of net sales for our writing efforts.

Also, ghost writing clients not only get full credit, they get full copyrights to all of the original material, including all original material generated by any ghost writers.

If you’d like to read more about ghost writers and ghost writing, look up my articles list on Ezine Articles under the name Karen S. Cole. I have over two dozen articles about ghost writing there. Also, I have been a freelance writer for over 30 years, off and on, and a ghost writer and copy editor on a regular basis since 2003, so I pretty much know what I’m talking about.

Diversity of ghost writing

As a ghost writer, I find that my clients are widely diverse. I take on both fiction and nonfiction projects, and have had Indian gurus, Russian school teachers, English racing experts, Jewish Holocaust survivors, American bondage and discipline mavens, and almost every type of person you can imagine as my clients.

Photo by Horia Varlan

This of course includes ordinary people with extraordinary gifts for fiction writing, at least in the ideas department. So I’m kept perpetually amused and continuously enlightened by my diverse clients.

Books I’ve either ghost written, edited or otherwise assisted with have gone to the tops of the New York Times best seller lists; but I can’t mention them in print, as I sign a contract every time stating that I will not release most information regarding my work on my clients’ books.

I can give you a brief list of books I’ve helped out on here, three to be exact:

  • The Antichrist Version 666, a fiction novel I helped to ghostwrite, about one man who is brave enough to save the solar system;
  • The Boys of Birmingham, a narrative nonfiction book about how the FBI caught Dr. King’s killer, which I helped to professionally edit;
  • Joshua’s Missing Peace, a nonfiction contemporary book about how one mother found the diagnosis for her son’s unusual illness, for which I helped to arrange the ghost writing and publishing.

Recently, I also helped out on a book by an Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam War veteran, a book on how to land your ideal Prince Charming, a book about polar bears, global warming and how to be true to yourself, a book about how Rwanda is doing in the years after the 1994 genocide, and a book about using ice as a non-invasive therapy for many serious illnesses.

My legacy as a ghost writer

I actually have about 200 some books under my belt and dozens of screenplays as well, all of which I helped out on in some capacity in my role as a ghost writer, editor and marketing provider for books, memoirs and screenplays.

So I feel like I’ve left at least some kind of legacy or otherwise made my mark in this world, even though the vast majority of my projects don’t feature my name on them in any regard. And I’ve gotten a really good career out of it to boot, too.

Do you think now that you could potentially use a ghost writer’s professional services, or even make a pretty great ghost writer yourself?