What is "ghostwriter"

ghostwriter \ghost"writ`er\, ghost-writer \ghost"-writ`er\n. One who ghost-writes (a book, article, etc.) for someone else.

n. A professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, or reports which are officially credited to another person.

n. a writer who gives the credit of authorship to someone else [syn: ghost]

A ghostwriter is a person who is hired to author books, manuscripts, screenplays, speeches, articles, blog posts, stories, reports, whitepapers, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material. In music, ghostwriters are often used to writing songs, lyrics and instrumental pieces. Screenplay authors can also use ghostwriters to either edit or rewrite their scripts to improve them.

Ghostwriters may have varying degrees of involvement in the production of a finished work. Some ghostwriters are hired to edit and clean up a rough draft or partially completed work, while others are hired to do most of the writing based on an outline provided by the credited author. For some projects, such as creating an autobiography for a celebrity, ghostwriters will do a substantial amount of research. Ghostwriters are also hired to write fiction in the style of an existing author, often as a way of increasing the number of books that can be published by a popular author. Ghostwriters will often spend a period from several months to a full year researching, writing, and editing nonfiction and fiction works for a client, and they are paid either per page, per each word or via total word count, with a flat fee, with a percentage of the royalties of the sales, or by using some combination thereof. The ghostwriter is sometimes acknowledged by the author or publisher for his or her writing services, euphemistically called a "researcher" or "research assistant", but often the ghostwriter is not credited.

A consultant or career-switcher may pay a ghostwriter to write a book on a topic in their professional area, to establish or enhance her credibility as an 'expert' in their field. Public officials and politicians employ "correspondence officers" to respond to the large volume of official correspondence. A number of papal encyclicals have been written by ghostwriters. A controversial and scientifically unethical practice is medical ghostwriting, where biotech or pharmaceutical companies pay professional writers to produce papers and then recruit (via a payment or as a perk) other scientists or physicians to attach their names to these articles before they are published in medical or scientific journals. Some university and college students hire ghostwriters from essay mills to write entrance essays, term papers, theses, and dissertations. This is largely considered unethical unless the actual ghostwriting work is just light editing.

Ghostwriting (or simply "ghosting") also occurs in other creative fields. Composers have long hired ghostwriters to help them to write musical pieces and songs; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is an example of a well-known composer who was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons. Ghosting also occurs in popular music. A pop music ghostwriter writes lyrics and a melody in the style of the credited musician. In hip hop music, the increasing use of ghostwriters by high-profile hip-hop stars has led to controversy. In the visual arts, it is not uncommon in either fine art or commercial art such as comics for a number of assistants to do work on a piece that is credited to a single artist.

Ghostwriter is an American children's mystery television series created by Liz Nealon and produced by the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop) and BBC One. It began airing on PBS on October 4, 1992, and the final episode aired on February 12, 1995. The series revolves around a close-knit circle of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of young detectives with the help of an invisible ghost named Ghostwriter. Ghostwriter can communicate with the kids only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. The series was filmed on location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

A ghostwriter is a person who writes under someone else's name with their consent. Celebrities often employ ghostwriters to produce autobiographies.

Ghostwriter may also refer to the following:

As with many television shows, Ghostwriter (4 October 1992 to 13 February 1995) also produced several book stories that never made it to air. This article lists all books based on the show.

• The Ghostwriter Detective Guide 1 October 1992 by Susan Lurie
• A Match of Wills 1 October 1992 by Eric Weiner
• Courting Danger and Other Stories November 1992 by Dina Anastasio
• Dress Code Mess 1 October 1992 by Sarah St. Antoine
• The Mini Book of Kids' Puzzles
• The Big Book of Kids' Puzzles
• Off the Top of Your Head: Trivia, Facts, and Fun
• Steer Clear of Haunted Hill
• The Team: On and Off the Set
• Amazement Park Adventure
• Alias Diamond Jones
• Doubletalk: Codes, Signs, and Symbols
• Rally! A Year's Supply of Fun
• Blackout!
• A Blast With the Past
• Digging For Clues
• Disappearing Act
• Word Up!
• Write Now! A Postcard Book
• The Book Chase
• Go Figure: Puzzles, Games, and Funny Figures of Speech
• Clinton Street Crime Wave
• Read This Rebus!
• Ghost Story
• What's the Score? A Sports Puzzle Book
• The Big Stink and Five Other Mysteries
• Laugh Rally! A Ghostwriter Joke Book
• The Chocolate Bar Bust
• School's Out! Puzzles That Take You Cool Places
• Daycamp Nightmare: Camp at Your Own Risk #1
• Disaster On Wheels: Camp at Your Own Risk #2
• Creepy Sleepaway: Camp at Your Own Risk #3
• Night of the Living Cavemen
• The Haunted House of Puzzles
• A Crime of Two Cities
• Movie Marvels: Film Facts You'll Flip For
• Just in Time
• The Ghostwriter Detective Guide 2
• Deadline
• Cow-Eating Fish and Other Amazing Animals
• Attack of the Slime Monster
• The Man Who Vanished
• Alien Alert
• Caught in the Net
• Hector's Haunted House

Category:Series of children's books