I have been a ghostwriter for over thirty years, publishing more than a hundred books under other people’s names, as well as those under my own name. It has allowed me to live a hundred different and varied lives and it is a profession I like to encourage all writers to consider. Several of my own novels have featured ghostwriters as central characters, including Secrets of the Italian Gardener and What Lies Around Us.
All Robert Harris’s books are good, and many of them are huge bestsellers. This one is a particularly tightly written thriller. It accurately depicts the world of ghostwriters, and how their relationships with their famous clients work. It was later made into a movie by Roman Polanski, with Ewan McGregor as the ghostwriter and Pierce Brosnan as his ex-prime minister client, raising the profile of the ghostwriting business even further. I loved that he quoted my Ghostwriting book at the start of each chapter.
'An unputdownable thriller about corrupt power and sex' Sunday Telegraph
'Guaranteed to keep you awake' The Times
A body washes up on the deserted coastline of America's most exclusive holiday retreat. But it's no open-and-shut case of suicide. The death of Robert McAra is just the first piece of the jigsaw in an extraordinary plot that will shake the very foundations of international security.
For McAra was a man who knew too much. As ghostwriter to one of the most controversial men on the planet - Britain's former prime minister, holed up in a remote ocean-front house to finish his…
Barbara Feinman Todd is a top-level Washington ghostwriter and journalist. In this memoir, she gives a shocking, and entertaining insight into her relationships with clients such as Hillary Clinton, as well as explaining the dynamics of political journalism at the very highest level. When she accidentally confides one of Hillary’s secrets to an editor, whose discretion she thought she could trust, her professional world is blown apart.
An accomplished former ghostwriter and book researcher who worked with Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and Hillary Clinton goes behind-the-scenes of the national’s capital to tell the story of how she survived the exciting, but self-important and self-promoting world of the Beltway.
Barbara Feinman Todd has spent a lifetime helping other people tell their stories. In the early 1980s, she worked for Bob Woodward, first as his research assistant in the paper’s investigative unit and, later, as his personal researcher for Veil, his bestselling book about the CIA. Next she helped Carl Bernstein, who was struggling to finish his…
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast…
This book is a direct competitor to my own title, but Teena Lyons is a hugely experienced ghostwriter and I have to admit that she has done a very thorough job of explaining how the business works. She interviewed a number of other ghostwriters in the course of writing the book, (myself included). The result is highly readable and a useful introduction to the business.
“A good book to read if you're interested in ghost writing. The chapters on what makes a good ghost, how to become a ghostwriter, getting structure right and most of all what to do when it all goes wrong are a must-read!” Dora Archie Okeyo - Reviewer
“This book leads you through the world of ghostwriting. There really is everything in this book and I have found the information invaluable.” Karen Lawton - Reviewer
“A very good resource indeed. A straightforward, no nonsense guide to the world of ghostwriting.” Ruth Giles - Reviewer
Ginny Carter is another very experienced ghostwriter and in this book, she explains exactly why it is good for business people to write books in order to promote themselves, their companies, and their products. Since most successful business people do not have the time to write the books themselves, her eloquent arguments will inevitably lead them to hiring ghostwriters such as Ginny – and myself.
If you're a coach, consultant, or speaker who makes a living from your expertise, this is for you. It's the guide you need to help you plan, write, and promote the book that elevates your authority, increases your visibility, and gets more clients saying 'yes'. Because creating such a book is a challenge. Where do you start? How do you keep going until the end? And what do you do when you've finished? Don't let your book stay in your head - allow it to come to life and make a positive difference…
Bernard Marks and Martha Alford met by chance. The odds were long that they would hit it off. That wasn’t in the cards they’d been dealt at birth. But, as gamblers in love, they rolled the dice. And then they worked hard, took risks, caught lucky breaks, built satisfying careers,…
This memoir is an intimate portrait of a relationship between one ghostwriter and her complicated, larger than life client, a famous publisher, entrepreneur, and socialite, the late Naim Attallah. It is a beautifully written book, providing many profound insights about life and about writing, and showing how deeply involved a ghostwriter and client can become in one another’s lives.
When Jennie Erdal was hired to edit a flamboyant London publisher’s Russian books in translation, she was happy to be able to commute from her home in Scotland. Soon, however, she was also secretly writing her boss’s love letters, hundreds of newspaper columns that appeared in his name, and, though she had never before written fiction, his two well-reviewed novels. For more than fifteen years she would be the indispensable ghostwriter for the exasperating, obsessive, but nontheless charming “Tiger.”Erdal reveals this oddly intimate relationship with a novelist’s flair for character and observation--and wry insight into her own collusion. Suspenseful, controversial,…
This was one of the first books explaining what ghostwriters do, how to become one, or how and why to hire one. Robert Harris quoted it extensively in his bestselling thriller, The Ghost.
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse…
Me and The Times offers a fresh perspective on those pre-internet days when the Sunday sections of The New York Times shaped the country’s political and cultural conversation. Starting in 1967, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections over 30 years, innovating and troublemaking all the way.
