Editing Ghostwriter (section)

==Remuneration and credit==
[[File:Hrcraad.jpg|thumb|right|upright|The ghostwriter for [[Hillary Clinton]]'s memoirs received a $500,000 payment for collaborating with her.]]

Ghostwriters will often spend from several months to a full year researching, writing, and editing non-fiction and fiction works for a client, and they are paid based on a price per hour, per word, or per page, with a flat fee, a percentage of the royalties of the sales, or some combination thereof. In 2013, [[literary agent]] Madeleine Morel stated that the average ghostwriter's advance for work for major book publishers was "between $40,000 and $70,000".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://wwword.com/3217/people/profile/madeleine-morel/ |title=Madeleine Morel – Profile |website=wwword |date=April 22, 2013 |access-date=May 10, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191028093411/http://wwword.com/3217/people/profile/madeleine-morel/ |archive-date=October 28, 2019 |url-status=dead }}</ref> These benchmark prices are mirrored approximately in the film industry by the Writers Guild, where a Minimum Basic Agreement gives a starting price for the screenplay writer of $37,073 (non-original screenplay, no treatment).<ref>{{cite web|title=Contracts|publisher=[[Writers Guild of America]]|url=http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/contracts/min2014.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150331044042/http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/contracts/min2014.pdf|archive-date=March 31, 2015}}</ref>

However, the recent shift into the digital age (15–20% world market share of books by 2015) has brought some changes, by opening newer markets that bring their own opportunities for authors and writers<ref>{{cite web|website=Bain.com|title=Publishing in the digital era|url=http://www.bain.com/Images/BB_Publishing_in_the_digital_era_4_11.pdf}}</ref>—especially on the more affordable side of the ghostwriting business. One such market is the shorter book, best represented at the moment by Amazon's Kindle Singles imprint: texts of 30,000 words and under.<ref name="theguardian.com">{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/05/amazon-kindle-singles-short|title=The big short – why Amazon's Kindle Singles are the future|author=Julian Gough|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=September 5, 2013 }}</ref> Such a length would have been much harder to sell before digital reader-technologies became widely available, but is now quite acceptable. Writers on the level of [[Ian McEwan]] have celebrated this recent change, mainly for artistic reasons.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/some-notes-on-the-novella|title=Some Notes on the Novella|author=Ian McEwan|date=October 29, 2012|magazine=The New Yorker}}</ref>

As a consequence, the shorter format makes a project potentially more affordable for the client/author. Manhattan Literary, a ghostwriting company, states that "book projects on the shorter side, tailored to new markets like the Kindle Singles imprint and others (30,000–42,000 words) start at a cost of $15,000".<ref name="washingtonpost.com">{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/who-wrote-that-political-memoir-no-who-actually-wrote-it/2014/06/09/8e89ccae-f00a-11e3-9ebc-2ee6f81ed217_story.html|title=Who wrote that political memoir? No, who actually wrote it?|author=Paul Farhi|date=June 9, 2014|newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.manhattanliterary.com/modules/wfchannel/index.php?pagenum=5 |title=Cost of professional ghostwriting |website=ManhattanLiterary.com |access-date=May 18, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150515065007/http://www.manhattanliterary.com/modules/wfchannel/index.php?pagenum=5 |archive-date=May 15, 2015 }}</ref> And this shorter book appears to be here to stay. It was once financially impractical for publishers to produce such [[novella]]-length texts (they would have to charge too much); but this new market is, by 2015, already substantial and has been projected to be a solid part of the future of book publishing.<ref name="theguardian.com"/> So, with its appearance the starting price for the professional book writer has come down by about half, but only if this shorter format makes sense for the client.

On the upper end of the spectrum, with celebrities that can all but guarantee a publisher large sales, the fees can be much higher. In 2001, ''[[The New York Times]]'' stated that the fee that the ghostwriter for [[Hillary Clinton]]'s memoirs would receive was probably about $500,000 of her book's $8&nbsp;million advance, which "is near the top of flat fees paid to collaborators".<ref>{{cite news| url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E3DF153AF93BA35752C0A9679C8B63 | work=The New York Times | first=David D. | last=Kirkpatrick | title=Media Talk; Mrs.Clinton Seeks Ghostwriter for Memoirs | date=January 8, 2001}}</ref>

A recent availability also exists, of outsourcing many kinds of jobs, including ghostwriting, to [[Offshoring|offshore]] locations like India, China, and the Philippines where the customer can save money.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/business-19476254|title=The globalisation of work – and people|work=BBC News|date=September 6, 2012 }}</ref> The true tests of credibility—the writer's track record, and samples of his or her craft—become even more important in these instances, when the writer comes from a [[culture]] and [[first language]] that are entirely different from the client's.

In some cases, ghostwriters are allowed to share credit. For example, a common method is to put the client/author's name on a book cover as the main [[byline]] (by [a''uthor's name'']) and then to put the ghostwriter's name underneath it (with [g''hostwriter's name'']). Sometimes this is done in lieu of pay or to decrease the amount of payment to the book ghostwriter for whom the credit has its own intrinsic value. Also, the ghostwriter can be cited as a co-author of a book, or listed in the movie or film credits when having ghostwritten the script or screenplay for film production.

For nonfiction books, the ghostwriter may be credited as a "contributor" or a "research assistant". In other cases, the ghostwriter receives no official credit for writing a book or article; in cases where the credited author or the publisher or both wish to conceal the ghostwriter's role, the ghostwriter may be asked to sign a [[nondisclosure contract]] that legally forbids any mention of the writer's role in a project. Some have made the distinction between "author" and "writer", as ghostwriter Kevin Anderson explains in a ''[[Washington Post]]'' interview: "A ghostwriter is an interpreter and a translator, not an author, which is why our clients deserve full credit for authoring their books."<ref name="washingtonpost.com"/>