# So with "ghostwriters" are they supposedly to stay anonymous forever or what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 2, 2013, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840 "2013-09-02T23:54:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/21 "2013-09-04T01:00:52Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > I was a ghostwriter for a while: children’s series novels. The bulk of them had a listed author who really existed and had started the series, only to turn it over to drones like me when it caught fire and became too much for any one person. A few of them, in other series, were credited to pseudonyms. R.L. Stine? ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/22 "2013-09-04T02:25:06Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > R.L. Stine? Nope, though his series would have been fun to work on. Scuttlebutt in the industry was that he actually did write all his own stuff, though he sure would’ve been going at a breakneck pace if true. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/23 "2013-09-04T03:03:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Examples would be “authors” like Richard Bachman, Cleo Birdwell, Paul French, Robert Galbraith, Anne Rampling, and Mary Westmacott - all established authors who decided to use a pseudonym for works they didn’t want to have judged by their famous identity. Wasn’t Paul French actually Isaac Asimov? IIRC, he used the pseudonym specifically for his “young readers” novels, featuring a character named ‘Lucky’ Starr. In fact, I think one of the ‘Lucky’ Starr novels was my introduction to Asimov, back when I was 12 or so. I suspect he used a pseudonym because his real name might scare off younger readers (or those buying the books for them), given the more complex nature of his better-known works. I remember a series of pulp novels I got into back in the early 1990s: “Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan”. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Don Pendleton wasn’t writing the things - they were cranked out way faster than it was humanly possible to write, something like a new novel every month. I think that was around the same time I learned that the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books were ghostwritten. Apparently, a local author, who was interviewed in the local paper, indicated that she had ghostwritten several books in a popular series, though she was, of course, contractually forbidden from specifying _which_ series. Though from the way she talked _around_ it, it was fairly evident (to me, anyway) she was talking about Nancy Drew. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/24 "2013-09-04T03:16:34Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The only way to answer that is to read the contract. Well, yes. But I’m not in a position to read any writers contracts. So I’m asking some professional writers what those contracts usually say. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/25 "2013-09-04T03:28:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Well, yes. But I’m not in a position to read any writers contracts. So I’m asking some professional writers what those contracts usually say. Beats me. I don’t know of anyone who gets to read contracts for Rowling or King or any of those megastars. They’re kept more secret than ghostwriters are. My only assumption is that megastars get what they want using the threat that if they don’t they’ll leave for a publisher who will give them what they want. But if they talk about their spoils, it ain’t to the likes of me. The Venn intersection of my reality and theirs is the empty set. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2013, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/26 "2013-09-04T16:53:01Z")
Then again, there are also ghostwriters who are really nothing more than transcribers/editors. I knew a guy in Berlin way back when - while I, and most of my friends, would do the occasional translations from German to English, he got contracts from major/minor celebrities to write their books. In his case, he would get audio tapes and simply put them to paper, do some editing here and there, and then return each chapter for that “celebrity” to make notes - adding a bit here, deleting a bit there. Eventually a book was completed. However, I don’t think any of those books were ever published - they were mostly vanity projects that were quite detailed, but of little or no interest to any publisher. I think he was quite happy to NOT have his name attached to any of them. He did, however, get paid very nicely, and most of the time it took far longer to finish than expected (not his fault), so he would get a nice chunk of change for a project he knew was going to remain unpublished, but that was not his problem. Just sayin’ - just because you are ghostwriting for others doesn’t necessarily mean any book is going to be published or become a best seller. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/27 "2013-09-05T01:21:21Z")
When I read _Hot Pretzels With Mustard_ by David Brenner, I thought he came off as kind of an egotistical, grudge-carrying, self-justifying jerk. It never occurred to me to suppose he had a ghostwriter (except for the matter of him needing a personal spell-checker for the entire manuscript, and I don’t think that really counts). ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/28 "2013-09-05T01:41:52Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Examples would be “authors” like Richard Bachman, Cleo Birdwell, Paul French, Robert Galbraith, Anne Rampling, and Mary Westmacott - all established authors who decided to use a pseudonym for works they didn’t want to have judged by their famous identity. But all of these books would have sold much better if they had been sold under their author’s real name so at least some publishers must have been tempted to reveal the secret. Do what extent is a publisher legally prevented from revealing a writer’s real identity? When Richard Bachman was outed, a lot of his novels were re-released as STEPHEN KING writing as Richard Bachman [Here](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GV6y8N5zpDU/UdNtKddBTcI/AAAAAAAACJM/0LYB64K_MX8/s320/king_thinner+cover.jpg)’s an example. I have no idea what King’s contract says about the matter. My feeling is probably that the publisher can do whatever the hell they want. They probably wouldn’t have agreed to do it if there was no chance of taking advantage of an eventual outing. _Thinner_ sold ten times as many copies once King’s name was attached to it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/29 "2013-09-05T02:27:26Z")
There’s a vast difference between authors using a different name for different types of works and authors publishing under a pseudonym to see what the effect of their names are. There must be 50,000 (100,000? 500,000?) examples of the former, ranging from extremely famous authors to extremely unknown ones. Some of them are entirely open about it, some make a fetish of secrecy, some are open secrets, some are known just to the in crowd. Some have enormous clout and some have none. They do so for a whole range of reasons, too many to make any generalization about. The number of famous authors who want to pull a Rowling probably can be limited to two hands. They all have enormous clout. Asimov was not one of them when he wrote David Starr, Space Ranger. He was certainly a well-known sf writer, but that didn’t necessarily carry over to juvenile fiction in 1952. Most of those books would have sold to the library market anyway. He used [a pseudonym for a reason few others would need to worry about](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Starr_series): > [@](#): > > On 23 March 1951, Asimov met with his agent, Frederik Pohl, and Walter I. Bradbury, then the science fiction editor at Doubleday & Co., who had a proposal for him. Pohl and Bradbury wanted Asimov to write a juvenile science fiction novel that would serve as the basis for a television series. Fearing that the novel would be adapted into the “uniformly awful” programming he saw flooding the television channels, he decided to publish it under the pseudonym “Paul French”. And the books stayed under the Paul French name long after Asimov revealed his authorship, too. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/30 "2013-09-05T02:51:06Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > I have no idea what King’s contract says about the matter. My feeling is probably that the publisher can do whatever the hell they want. They probably wouldn’t have agreed to do it if there was no chance of taking advantage of an eventual outing. _Thinner_ sold ten times as many copies once King’s name was attached to it. Did the publisher know they were getting Stephen King’s work, or did he submit them to the publisher pseudonymously as well? ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/31 "2013-09-05T03:03:39Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Did the publisher know they were getting Stephen King’s work, or did he submit them to the publisher pseudonymously as well? Yes, they knew. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/32 "2013-09-05T13:16:15Z")
One of my wife’s relatives was a ghost author. She couldn’t discuss who she had written for. She’s dead now, and we never did find out who her clients were. So a.) she was committed to her anonymity and b.) she clearly felt that her death wouldn’t release her from her contracts. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/33 "2013-09-05T14:17:14Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > Did the publisher know they were getting Stephen King’s work, or did he submit them to the publisher pseudonymously as well? Forgive the hijack, but I just wanted to say I love your films–such a broad range! ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/34 "2013-09-05T14:31:39Z")
I have a friend who is a ghostwriter and while she has occasionally told me entertaining stories of working with difficult “subjects” she’s always kept it vague enough that it would require a concerted effort on my part to figure out who the person is. She’s also published a few novels under her own name but ghostwriting apparently pays better. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/35 "2013-09-05T14:38:57Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > As for sports bios, there are famous stories I’m too lazy to look up with the athlete disputing something attributed to him and then having a reporter point out it’s from his autobiography. I’m somewhat over 99% certain there are entire autobiographies the athlete never got around to reading. Charles Einstein wrote an “autobiography” of Willie Mays that did very well. When Mays was asked about the book in an interview, he didn’t even know it existed. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/36 "2013-09-11T01:07:01Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > One of my wife’s relatives was a ghost author. She couldn’t discuss who she had written for. She’s dead now, \ So, why are you saying “ **was** a ghost author”? 😛 [del]Umm, I mean, I’m sorry for your loss…[/del] No. Just – no. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840/37 "2013-09-11T03:28:42Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > So, why are you saying “ **was** a ghost author”? > > 😛 > > [del]Umm, I mean, I’m sorry for your loss…[/del] > > No. Just – no. Well, she _was_ a ghost writer even before she died. For all I know, she’s a ghost _writer_ now (two separate words). But, if so, she hasn;t communicated anything she’s written to us. And she’d probably appreciate the pun. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-with-ghostwriters-are-they-supposedly-to-stay-anonymous-forever-or-what/667840.md?page=1)