Who typically commissions a ghostwriter?

By some accounts between 40 percent and 80 percent of all the books published every year are ghostwritten, although there are no specific sales figures available for ghostwritten titles. Even going by that lowest percentage it seems there is a lot of work available for those writers willing to set their “named author” status to one side. But who hires a ghostwriter in the first place?

In order to answer the question I interviewed a number of ghostwriters about their experiences of the commissioning process. Most of the writers are novelists or non-fiction writers in their own right and/or have become published writers since gaining experience as ghostwriters. Their routes into ghostwriting are varied, but all were journalists, speechwriters or authors before taking on ghostwriting assignments. One – Stephanie Krikorian – was a television producer although her ghosting began only after she co-authored her first book. Thus the importance of previous experience as a publishable writer cannot be overplayed.

The quick answer to the “who commissions a ghost writer?” question is that almost anybody that is part of the publication process starting with the subject or purported author of the book and ending at the publisher, can hire a ghostwriter for a specific project.

Most of the writers I spoke to have literary agents and find their work through them. Michael Robotham, a former ghostwriter and now successful crime fiction author, for example wrote 15 autobiographies and all of these projects came to him via his agent, Mark Lucas. According to Michael, “Within the publishing world you get known. If a book does well then one publisher will ask another who wrote it and they will happily give up that information and contact your agent. Promotion is done within the industry.”

This is also the case for Stephanie Krikorian, a US-based celebrity ghostwriter who gets her assignments, “Either through referrals or through my agent. I very rarely solicit, in fact I can’t think of a single incident in which I approached someone.”

Other ghostwriters, such as renowned celebrity ghostwriter Andrew Crofts work entirely through their own websites and are most often hired by the subjects of their books. For writers of Crofts’ caliber this often means that not only do they write the book, but that they also put together a publishing proposal to guarantee the book gets published.

Ghostwriting books is not always about celebrity autobiographies, however, and ghostwriters such as Julie-Ann Amos, who by her own admission services the, “lower end of the market,” are also hired directly by the named authors of the books – in Amos’ case through word-of-mouth promotion and a web presence. In her experience clients that have yet to be published often make the first move by hiring a ghostwriter themselves and then try to promote their book as a finished product or even go down the self-publishing route.

Ghostwriter and non-fiction author Tom Bromley has a slightly different experience of who hires him as a ghostwriter. In his previous professional life he was a commissioning editor and he has found that contacts he made within the publishing industry have been invaluable in finding him ghostwriting assignments. These range from the clients themselves to editors, publishers and, of course, his agent.

What can a ghostwriter expected to be paid and what are the payment models used?

What a ghostwriter, or any other writer for that matter, is paid can be a touchy subject, but is one that needs to be addressed as clearly as possible and on this all the ghostwriters I spoke to agree.

“You’ve got to get the money right,” said Rick Reilly, who ghostwrote a number of autobiographies of US sports stars including ice hockey star Wayne Gretsky, “because it’s going to be hell if you don’t.” Reilly is no longer ghostwriting and now focuses on writing his own books.

Julie-Ann Amos also agrees, “I’m as transparent as possible about my fees. It makes things easier in the long run,” she told me.

There are a variety of models of payment used by ghostwriters and their clients that range from a per word price for writing a book to a percentage of royalties. Typically, though, payment models appear to fall somewhere between these two extremes with most ghostwriters receiving a portion of any advance offered by a publisher and then a percentage of royalties on book sales.

Which payment model is used depends on a number of factors. If a ghostwriter is approached by the potential subject/author of a book directly and if the subject/author has no track record in publishing most often a flat fee will be agreed for the ghostwriter’s work. This removes any risk of the ghostwriter not receiving their minimum payment for their time and efforts. However, if the subject/named author of a book has some track record in publishing or is already a celebrity in their own right, ghostwriters will often take a percentage of any advance from a publisher (according to my interviewees ranging anywhere from 30 to 50 percent) and then a percentage of royalties (of a similar percentage to the share of the advance).

As Tom Bromley put it when I spoke to him, “If it comes from the publisher then they’ve already done the deal with the celebrity or whoever and there’s a finite amount to pay the ghostwriter and those projects tend to be for a flat fee. If you’re in on the project from the beginning – doing the deal directly with the agent then you’ll get a percentage.”

In absolute terms payment varies greatly depending on the type of work being done and the area of the market that the ghostwriter services. Andrew Crofts, who was the only celebrity ghostwriter comfortable with revealing exactly what he charges, said he charged a flat fee of between 60,000 and 100,000 pounds sterling for each book he writes, although he occasionally also takes a percentage of royalties. On the other end of the scale Julie-Ann Amos said her preferred fee model was, “a per page rate from 12 pounds a page and upwards, plus daily rates for any research that needs to be carried out.”

Michael Gruber, who was the ghostwriter of the highly-successful Robert K. Tanenbaum crime novels, received no upfront fee for his work and shared royalties 50/50 with Tanenbaum. In his own words, however, “My ghost career was idiosyncratic in that I had a cousin, Tanenbaum, who wanted to publish novels based on his career as a New York District Attorney, but he couldn't write.”

From what I learned through my interviews with ghostwriters a straight royalties agreement is an unusual arrangement. Most often ghostwriters agree to a combination of the two, but it seems that payment can also be the sticking point of many ghostwriting contracts. According to Rick Reilly who ghostwrote a number of autobiographies for US sports stars, “You think you’re going to get half. The agent for the athlete tries to screw you completely. Often says, ‘we’re not going to get anything but we’ll give you a lot of royalties.’ You say, ‘I’m not going to do it unless I get half of the advance and X percent of the royalties (…) They say, ‘no way’ and offer you’re a third. The least I’ll take is 40 percent and they’ll begrudgingly give you 40 percent.”

Payment “negotiations” of this kind notwithstanding, payment models form a significant part of ghostwriting contracts and getting this right is paramount. Finding the right payment model may be tricky but once it’s been found, according to Michael Robotham, it’s best to stick with it. His model was the clearest of all the writers I spoke to. Before he turned exclusively to writing only his own work he took one third of the advance plus one third of all royalties including any future film rights etc. The advance was usually paid in three parts: First payment on acceptance, second payment on publication of hardback and third on publication of paperback.

By-lines, co-authorship and acknowledgements. Who am I promoting anyway?

There will occasionally be a trade off of payment for crediting the ghostwriter on the cover of the book, although even this is not as straightforward a transaction as at first it might seem. Common sense might dictate that receiving direct acknowledgement for work would give ghostwriters a much-needed profile boost, but not all ghostwriters see this in such linear terms.

Julie-Ann Amos, for example, charges her clients an additional fee for using her name on the cover of their book as she believes her name lends the named author more credibility.

In the US ghostwriters are typically given a “With xxxx” by-line on the cover of a book, which makes the whole ghostwriting industry a much more transparent affair across the pond. In some cases, however, ghostwriters feel that having their name on the cover of a book may actually not benefit their writing career. According to Rick Reilly, “A great friend of mine wrote an excellent autobiography of a tennis player and decided not to put his name on the front because he didn’t want to be associated with sports autobiographies, or ‘jock-ographies’ as we call them.”

In the UK, however, as Tom Bromley put it, “people like the conceit that somebody wrote the whole thing themselves,” and mostly ghostwriters receive no direct acknowledgment of their role. He noted, however that his name usually appeared either on the book’s title page or in the acknowledgments depending on what the named author was comfortable with doing.

Although several of the ghostwriters I spoke to had given up ghosting other people’s work either after becoming disillusioned with the whole process, as in Rick Reilly’s case, following a public break-up with the named author, as in Michael Gruber’s case, or simply finding more fulfillment through writing their own books all, without exception, agreed that ghostwriting was a route into publishing that “puts food on the table” as Rick Reilly said or “funds your own writing” according to Tom Bromley.