A
recent newsletter on writing and publishing contains an anonymous
publishing insider’s story that reinforces suspicions I have long
held on the output of several prominent and prolific authors.
Everyone
already knows that celebrities, politicians, sports stars, etc. often
have ghost-writers for their biographies, but when it comes to
popular fiction it seems there is also a lot of ghosting going on.
Say
you are a fan of a super-star crime fiction writer – let’s call her
Gruoch Macbeth (the alleged real name of Shakespeare’s Lady
Macbeth) - and you eagerly await every book in her series of
Highland Horrors.
You
enjoy the first three or four books in Macbeth’s series before you start to notice a similarity or a formula in all her subsequent
plots. For most readers that’s no problem as they like familiarity
and predictability and so she continues to sell in the millions, but
the more circumspect reader can lose interest as the freshness and
originality of Macbeth’s early books seem to wane.
But
what you may not know is that Macbeth didn’t write more than the
first three books anyhow.
Once
she was established with those three books, her publisher demanded
that she keep producing outlines for future books. Her failure to
have done so would have resulted not only in a flagging career for
her, but also losses for the publisher on its investment.
So
to help Macbeth maintain her star status and guarantee continuing top
sales, the publisher turns to its special in-house team of
ghost-writers, editors and linguists to “write” her next book.
These teams consist of many talented individuals. The writers are
given the basic outline and demographic and together they hammer out
draft after draft until satisfied with the basic story. This is then
passed on to the linguists who know how to mimic Macbeth’s style
until they are satisfied it will pass muster as the next instalment
of Highland Horrors. Finally, a title is chosen, Gruoch Macbeth’s
name is slapped on the cover and off it goes to print and marketing.
And all Macbeth has to do is turn up to the promotions and talk about
her latest work as if she really did write it, with her reading public none the wiser.
The
publisher’s ghost team is not confined to just one genre, it is flexible and can move between the various imprints with ease. I’ve
always been aware that the really big authors get extra assistance in
producing their work, from the initial research right through to the
end marketing, but I didn’t realise that many best-sellers are
actually “manufactured”, and there are probably far more of them
than we might guess.
Meanwhile,
Macbeth is a busy woman. Not only does she produce an annual Highland
Horror, she often has titles in other genres under the pseudonyms of,
say, Cordelia Lear in historical fiction, or Rosy Ganymede in
chick-lit, but these identities are usually well-known to most of her fans and garner her even more kudos. She appears on chat shows,
attends international conferences, gives workshops and college
lectures, writes articles for magazines, newspapers, and also blogs
and tweets – so it can be baffling as to how she actually finds time to write!
I
once heard a famous author of this type speak at a conference where she
explained how she maintained her phenomenal output of several books a year in differing genres. She simply put it
down to the three D’s of drive, discipline and dedication. I agree
to some extent that those attributes are pretty important for any
writer, but now the cynic in me wouldn’t be surprised to learn that
the three D’s of many others who have iron-clad contracts to remain
anonymous have also helped to fuel her amazing success.
One
can muse on the ethics involved here, but publishing is a tough and
highly competitive business and if the end justifies the means does
it matter?
Disillusioning?
A harsh fact of publishing life? I’m not sure exactly how I feel,
although I know that there have been a number of popular authors
whose work I once enjoyed but which I no longer read for various
reasons. Either a book has not come up to standard or disappointed me in some way and I’ve not bothered to read any more books by that individual. Perhaps evidence of ghostly hands at work.
And
I certainly do know how cheated I felt years ago when I discovered
that my favourite girl sleuth Nancy Drew wasn’t really written by a
woman called Carolyn Keene but by old men with moustaches! There
are a number of other instances too. See here.
Have
a browse of any best-seller list and see if you can guess at those
authors whose work is perhaps not all that it seems.
This site is the best and covers many past years of the New York Times
best-sellers
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| Copyright Kamn137. See www.cartoonstock.com for more ghost-writer cartoons |
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