The Dilemma of Ghosting

Recognizing that the ghosting of fiction presents a greater ethical dilemma than nonfiction, (Donald Bain, often named as Margaret Truman's ghostwriter) asks, "Is a book buyer cheated when buying a novel not written by the person whose name appears on the cover? Is it fraud? I don't think so, though my bias is understandable." Perhaps his bias is, in fact, understandable--but he goes on to add: "In most cases, the consumer gets a lot better book than if the nonwriting collaborator had tried to do it solo." This will not do. The book is sold on the premise that a celebrity wrote it, and there is no excuse for such a pretense other than deceiving the consumer.

Still, one might ask, where's the harm? The journeymen writers doing the actual work undoubtedly realize more profit from being celebrity ghostwriters than they could from novels under their own names. The idea that the inflated money the celebrity and ghostwriter get would otherwise go to more deserving but less famous professional writers is clearly specious. The deceptiveness of attributing a book to a person who didn't write it is minor next to the credits for doing nothing that feature in many major motion pictures. And what does the deceived reader care, if the novel is a good read that appears to draw on the celebrity's area of expertise?

The answer is that there are several harms. The books, more even than most commercial fiction driven by the marketplace rather than the artistic impulse, are rarely good mystery fiction. The celebrity publicity machine attracts readers that might otherwise be drawn to better books. While the big advance might not have gone elsewhere, some of the bookstore display space, public-library buying, and newspaper review attention certainly would. The public impression that anybody can write a book erodes the professional respect accorded to real writers. And finally, in the unlikely event a celebrity author actually writes a novel, no one in the cynical book world will believe it.

Bain writes, "I'm often asked when talking to groups about my career: 'How can you stand to see someone else's name on a book that you've written?'" He finds it easy to answer: He makes a good living writing for others, and he takes pride in doing the best work he can on every project. Most professional writers would agree. Writing is such a hard way to make a living, it's tough to blame the ghostwriter for going where the money is.

from "The Ghost of Miss Truman", The Weekly Standard 11/18/2002 by Jon L. Breen