Do you like reading the autobiographies of well known people?
Of course you do.
It’s a type of voyeurism after all, taking a peep, so to speak, into the hither-to private world of someone famous, the appeal is timeless.
After all, once you’ve read all about them and their lives, you’ll feel, somehow, as if you know them personally.
At the time of writing for example, I am reading, for at least the fifth or maybe the sixth time, the memoir of writer Bill Bryson.
It’s called The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid and comes very highly recommended.
The pleasure in sitting and chuckling my way through Bill (I feel I can call him that as I sort of know him personally now) is doubled, for me, by knowing that he definitely write the book himself and that all of the words are most definitely his.
Which is more than what can be said for quite a few other well known autobiographies.
Think they were written by the man or woman in question, the person whose name and picture is on the front of the book?
Think again. They were written by a ghostwriter or, in some cases, more than one of them.
Take, for example, Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela.
Six million plus copies sold and counting.
But was the work and words exclusively his?
Only partially so. Mandela did make most of the notes himself but he worked alongside a ghostwriter, Richard Stengel, who refined the narrative and turned Mandela’s original notes and observations into the book you can read today.
So very much a team effort.
But at least the core of the book will be those original jottings of Mandela’s. And that is, believe me, quite unusual these days as far as the genre goes.
From the sublime to the ridiculous then and The Art Of The Deal ‘by’ Donald Trump.
The deal here being that Trump didn’t write a single word of a book that has, to date, sold 1.1 million copies.
For a book that was written by another ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, who crafted the work based on the assorted speeches, thoughts and all too regular public utterances of the man in question.
A deed for which, believe me, he will have been very handsomely rewarded.
As will his paymaster who can revel in the glory of his acolytes telling him how much they loved ‘his’ book.
Did I say ‘handsomely rewarded’?
Spare, the bitter recollections of one Henry Mountbatten-Windsor, aka Prince Harry was written, over, no doubt, an veritable ocean of low fat lattes and vegan croissants, by ghostwriter J.R Moehringer who was reportedly paid $1 million for his services.
Nice work if you can get it. And yes, I’d had done anything to have got that particular gig for myself.
With a far more balanced and critically acclaimed, rather than criticised book being the end result.
Because you can have two motives when you are ghost-writing someone’s life story for them.
You can make it all about them. Warts and all.
Or you can make it all about the person they want you to see. Full make up and photo shopped in words.
I always opt for the former. Moehringer went for the latter.
Moehringer is, incidentally, a very capable and skilled ghostwriter when he chooses to embrace his craft for all the right reasons.
He is also the man behind Open, the autobiography of tennis player Andre Agassi which is as good a sports book as you will read anywhere.
One final example I will give here is The Churchill Factor, a biography of Sir Winston Churchill which credits Boris Johnson as its author.
Except, you won’t be surprised to learn, he isn’t.
The book was researched and written by a team of Johnson’s staff whilst Johnson had additional help in putting together the final narrative from their (uncredited) work.
But if it’s his name on the cover, people are going to buy the book.
And for publishers, whose only consideration when it comes to any book, is how much money it will make them, that is all that matters.
And they’ll consider any literary trick or sleight of hand to make sure that it does.
