Celebrity authors gaslighting readers

[TheAverageJoanne]

I'm not naming either person in this post. My friend is a very successful author of women's contemporary fiction (not chick lit exactly). She's aware that a female celebrity author doesn't write her own books. She has a 👻 writer to "help out". She probably comes up with the premise and hands it over.

What are your thoughts on this? The woman in question isn't a reality show person, is in her 50s. I find it to be gaslighting, myself.

I’ve always presumed most celebrity books have ghostwriters.

Ghostwriters are the norm with celebrity books. It isn’t exactly a secret.

Not all of them have ghost writers though, while I don’t love some of them, have been at a few author events and their methods and writing habits definitely check out!! Also who cares really, as long as the person gets paid

No but I would expect that the majority do so it isn’t exactly a shocking revelation.

Celebrity authors mostly have ghost writers i don't think anybody thought (for example )Katie Price wrote her books.

Are you only discovering that celebrity books are written by ghost writers?

Many celebrity authors probably wouldn't get a publishing deal at all if they didn't have their name attached to it. Famous names sell books, and publishers know this.

That's not gaslighting.

It might be lying if she's passing the work off as her own but it's certainly not gaslighting.

I always assume all books by people well-known for things other than writing are ghost-written, or at least heavily ghost-amended.

Comedians are a bit different, because if they write their own material they are writers, though I concede novels are a different prospect.

If I like a book then it wouldn't really bother me who wrote it. I mean, obviously I'd prefer it wasn't by Hitler or something, but the difference between a ghostwriter and a celebrity wouldn't mean much to me.

Sometimes I wonder how a ghostwriter would feel about the whole thing, though. Do they also publish under their oen names? What's the money like for each type of work?

How ia it gaslighting? And what is that word used for everything

Do you mean an autobiography which I always assume is a ghostwriter, or do you mean fiction books like Sara cox for example, which I would expect to be written by her and not a ghostwriter?

I feel sorry for people trying to make it as authors nowadays due to "celebrity " authors - whether or not they write their own books.

I've read a few by these writers and they're shit. If they'd been written by an ordinary person they would never have been published.

Prince Harry used the Pulitzer Prize winning author JR Moehringer. He is an exceptional writer and he worked hard to turn Harry's ramblings into a book. JR Moehringer wrote a well received article about the process. It was never a secret.

That's not exactly a revelation !
It's not new and not just celebrity writers though.
James Patterson has his name on gazillion books but they are usually written by someone else - although to be fair their name is usually on the cover (ie JAMES PATTERSON in big letters and "with Joe Bloggs" in smaller 😂).
I loved books like the Babysitter's Club and Sweet Valley as a child. Most of them weren't written by Ann M Martin and Francine Pascal. It was a team of ghostwriters.
Daisy Meadows of the Rainbow Fairies isn't even a real person.

I'm a ghostwriter - it's much, much more prevalent than you could ever imagine!

She's always been open about her fiction books being written by a ghost 👻.

I highly doubt that Peter Crouch does his own laundry either; or that Natalie Portman regularly jumps off piers 'for love'!

It actually makes sense to employ a ghostwriter when it's an autobiography about an interesting person, but who maybe doesn't have the language skills to edit and present all the info in an engaging way. There's a TV celebrity whom I like a lot - incredibly intelligent man - but I've read a sample of his autobiography, as well as lots of reviews, and he just has such a tedious style, giving far too much irrelevant detail, when communicating in book form. If he'd had a ghostwriter to help him, it would probably have been a fascinating book - and still largely 'written by' him.

Fiction is an entirely different matter, though. If you aren't a good writer, and it's not the story of your life, accept it and leave it to those who can do it well. It's so sad to think of all the hugely talented but unknown writers who never get their big break; yet any old crap with a celeb's name on the cover will get an instant huge advance, followed by massive sales.

I used to love the Three Investigators books when I was a child (I still do, actually!) - and I believed, being young, that Alfred Hitchcock had actually written them, as they put his name to the first ones in the series and strongly implied that he had been involved in the stories!

They had several different writers who wrote later titles, but they did always credit the actual author. The franchise is still going in Germany, and they're still writing new German-language titles!

To be fair she did.

As helpful admissions go, that would rank alongside Greg Davies 'admitting' that he was never a professional jockey

I'll have a look at one of her novels and see if she does pass it off as her own.

Too many celebrities suddenly discover a real talent for writing children's books which i never believed was them. Its a bit like perfume/clothes lines. We know the celebrity hasn't designed anything but are just putting their name to it

Not autobiographies no. Interesting example you've given too.

My first problem is that there seems to be a disconnect with your "fact" (which is hearsay to begin with) that a celebrity doesn't write her own book, and what seems to be your own leap to conclude that she does nothing but hand over the premise to someone else.

My second problem is that it's not clear to me if this is a celebrity who happens to write books, or if it's an author who has become a celebrity because of the popularity of her books.

My third problem is that "gaslighting," which has become an overused term, is not the same thing as misrepresentation.

But, no, I have no problem with it. James Patterson reportedly uses ghostwriters, but it's an open secret and hasn't affected his popularity, as far as I know. It's fairly common, and mostly confined to pop authors, so it's not as if anyone is being scammed.