United Ghostwriters

Blurred Lines: Intimacy in Ghosting and Editing

July 9, 2019July 9, 2019
by Emma Murray

Our guest blogger this week is the wonderful Gillian Stern. Gillian is a ghostwriter – mostly of memoir – commissioned by Penguin, Hodder, Orion, Bloomsbury and W&N, among others. I have a new secret. I think about him all the time. I imagine his thoughts and responses. When I am not with him I talk to him in my mind. I record our conversations and listen to his voice before I go to sleep, at the gym, on the bus. I read his messages to me and the ones on social media and then I read into them. He has

July 2, 2019July 2, 2019
by Emma Murray

Our guest blogger this week, the inimitable Ben Jeapes, has had several fine novels professionally published under his own name, and has ghostwritten many more – sometimes a single book, sometimes a whole series – on behalf of various clients. www.benjeapes.com Terry Pratchett once hinted that bookshops holding celebrity author signings shouldn’t pass comment if the author spends an inordinate amount of time reading their own book as: “It may be the first time they’ve seen it.” Is anyone really surprised to learn that celebrities might not have penned their own novel? In the process of becoming well-known they will

June 24, 2019June 24, 2019
by SpencerHonniball

Most ghostwriting jobs have a reasonably standard lifespan, give or take a few months. Another of our writers here at United Ghostwriters, Ginny Carter, has blogged on this site about some of the extremes either side of this, and as I’m soon to enter my seventh year working on a project, I often wonder: how much longer will it be before the story I and my collaborator have toiled over will finally make its debut? The book in question had been due to be published in the summer, but legal complications associated with the Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry have delayed

June 11, 2019June 11, 2019
by Ginny Carter

At United Ghostwriters we speak to many professionals and business people who want a book to promote their expertise. They’ve heard that if they want to raise their profile so they’re more in demand they ‘need a book’, and that without one they’ll find it hard to stand out. I can see their point – it makes sense. But how exactly does writing a book bring in more (and better) clients? What are the mechanics of it? It’s a fair question, because writing (or commissioning the ghostwriting of) a book is a significant investment. You don’t want to commit yourself

May 29, 2019June 7, 2019
by Ian Shircore

A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, according to the famous quote from Oscar-winning producer Sam Goldwyn. Never mind that Goldwyn always claimed it wasn’t his line (the joke had been around for decades before it was attributed to him). If he didn’t say it, he should have done. And as the leading Hollywood mogul of his day, he certainly knew more about contracts than most. But how much do you need to know about contracts before you sign a deal with a ghostwriter? Do you need to get your lawyer involved? Does everything need to be

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