United Ghostwriters

The Ethics of Ghostwriting: What would Professor Appiah do…

September 20, 2020September 21, 2020
by Susan Feldstein

I’ve always been a fan of a good problem page – aren’t we all? (OK, probably not, but I think there are more of us than might care to admit it!) For this reason, one of the many things I look forward to on my regular trips (pre-lockdown, that is) with my American husband to see my mother-in-law in New York is the New York Times Sunday Magazine, with its regular column, The Ethicist, compiled and written by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Every week, the NYU Professor of Philosophy and Law selects one or two ethical dilemmas from a plethora of

September 7, 2020September 7, 2020
by Ian Shircore

Funny how things rub you up the wrong way, isn’t it? There it is again. “Writing’s not that easy,” says the smugly irritating ad-girl’s voice that gets in the way and sends me lunging for the “Skip ads” button every time I want to watch a YouTube clip. Not that easy, indeed! No one ever said it was, did they? I remember Clive James quoting Thomas Mann’s opinion – “A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people” – and adding that the whole point was to make it look easy, like a conjuror

August 31, 2020August 31, 2020
by CaroHandley

You’re excited. You have a great idea for a book; you know what you want to say, you can picture the cover, you ran the idea past your friend/colleague/partner and they loved it. You can almost smell that scent of newly-printed pages and see the cover on the table in the bookshop… And that’s where the fantasy ends. Because to get to that glorious moment when you hold your published book in your hand, you’ve got to write it. And that takes a lot of time, thought, effort and creativity, when actually, your life is already overfilled and you really

August 24, 2020August 24, 2020
by SpencerHonniball

I’m often asked about the best way to start working on a manuscript, and have lost count of the amount of people who claim to have a bestselling story in their heads, but have yet to write a single page. Understandably, the unrelenting pace of life – pre-lockdown, at least; and, for many, during and after it – accounts for so much time that getting things going seems nigh on impossible, let alone establishing some kind of rhythm when settling into the writing process, albeit while managing the precarious balancing act that is the work/life balance. The truth, as

August 4, 2020August 4, 2020
by CherylRickman

Good News for the Publishing Industry In between the headlines, amid the doom, encouraging whispers of the book-trade bouncing back from the Covid crisis are buoying the publishing industry. Signs of an upturn have replaced the initial downturn, which came from the surge of shuttered shops as bookshops and libraries closed their doors; author engagements, trade fairs and commissions were cancelled and industry staff were furloughed and sent to work from home. Some publishing firms, like Bloomsbury, have weathered the impact of the Covid storm well, even reporting a rise in sales. Others have been able to partially recoup losses

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The Ethics of Ghostwriting: What would Professor Appiah do…

Writing’s not that easy…

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