The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hack \Hack\, a.
Hackneyed; hired; mercenary.
--Wakefield.
Hack writer, a hack; one who writes for hire. ``A vulgar
hack writer.''
--Macaulay.
WordNet
n. a mediocre and disdained writer [syn: hack, literary hack]
Wikipedia
Hack writer is a colloquial and usually pejorative term used to refer to a writer who is paid to write low-quality, rushed articles or books "to order", often with a short deadline. In a fiction-writing context, the term is used to describe writers who are paid to churn out sensational, lower-quality "pulp" fiction such as " true crime" novels or " bodice ripping" paperbacks. In journalism, the term is used to describe a writer who is deemed to operate as a " mercenary" or "pen for hire", expressing their client's political opinions in pamphlets or newspaper articles. Hack writers are usually paid by the number of words in their book or article; as a result, hack writing has a reputation for quantity taking precedence over quality.
Usage examples of "hack writer".
I liked him much better in his role as the cynical and seedy hack writer, because I could deal with that.
Some bubbleheaded hack writer who thinks she can strut around in spandex and a half a ton of makeup, then go home to her nice neighborhood and wash it all off.
Such details make it all the more excruciating to know she has pledged herself to a hack writer of espionage novels.
Currently scripting RKO B westerns, under yet another monicker, the work fronted by a politically acceptable hack writer who glommed a 35 percent cut.
Perhaps even Karl Marx was invented, the product of some hack writer.
Dick recognized his personal fascination and identification with the yance-men of Callisto, but surely by the time he had decided to rework that old material into a novel, he knew himself to be a yance-man--albeit one employed in the lower echelons of the power structure--as a hack writer producing sci-fi paperbacks.
It's the same place whether you're a blind poet mumbling immortal lines on the Aegean shore or a chain-smoking hack writer facing a deadline and the baleful screen of a word processor.