1076. Dan Gerstein, founder of Gotham Ghostwriters, looks at how ghostwriting fiction really works, who’s hiring ghostwriters, and why AI can’t replace human storytelling. We also talked about how ghostwriters negotiate royalties, film rights, and what makes a great collaboration work.
1076. Dan Gerstein, founder of Gotham Ghostwriters, looks at how ghostwriting fiction really works, who’s hiring ghostwriters, and why AI can’t replace human storytelling. We also talked about how ghostwriters negotiate royalties, film rights, and what makes a great collaboration work.
Find Dan at GothamGhostwriters.com.
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Mignon: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and for the next few weeks, while we're taking a season break, we're releasing some of the best-of-the best bonus episodes that people who support the show got during this last interview season. This week, you're getting the behind-the-scenes conversation with Dan Gerstein, who runs Gotham Ghostwriters, and we're talking about the special joys and problems of ghostwriting fiction.
We do these kinds of extras every time I do an interview, so almost every week, and people who support the show get these right away, so they got this one back in February. Their support really means a lot. It helps us keep going, and tells us that people care. So thank you to those of you who may be listening right now, and it you want to become a supporter, a Grammarpaloozian, you can sign up on the show page at Apple Podcasts right there on the listing or separately to get everything by text message. And you can go to quickanddirtytips.com/bonus to learn more. and links to both of those are in the show notes.
Welcome to your bonus episode for our interview with Dan Gerstein, founder of Gotham Ghostwriters. Check out the main segment if you haven't checked that out already, but Dan has been a prominent political speechwriter.
He's been doing writing and communications work for more than 30 years. He has a degree from Harvard. He's taught at NYU PR and Communications School and just is one of the leading voices on ghostwriting. And so Dan, thanks so much.
DAN: Thank you for having me.
MIGNON: You bet. We talked a lot about nonfiction ghostwriting in the main episode, but it also happens for fiction.
And I suspect that's a different thing; that working on a creative project is different from working on a fact-based project. So can you talk about sort of how ghostwriting for fiction works?
DAN: Yes, it really is different. And, you know, it tends to attract, you know, there are definitely writers who do both nonfiction and fiction. But for the most part, when we're placing writers with clients, our value proposition is helping people find customized, specialized talent, and the right writing partners for them.
And we've developed a very strong network of novelists, and fiction writers, and story consultants to help authors who want to develop a novel idea for a novel. And the working relationship is often similar; like the process, the work product for the collaborator. But it's a different skill set for the most part.
And the reality is for a lot of the nonfiction authors we work with, they have a vision for their book, and they're just looking for a skilled professional to kind of help them refine that vision and then execute it. For a lot of the people who are hiring ghostwriters to write a novel, they may have an inspiration or an idea, but really what they're struggling with is how do you construct the narrative, character development, all these things which, again, unless you're a novelist in your own right, are really hard things to do, and they're not something that the average person has really any understanding of how to do.
So, to a certain degree, again, if you have an idea for a novel, and you want to try and publish it, there's an even greater need for professional help than a lot of the authors we're working with on the nonfiction side.
MIGNON: Is it mostly celebrities who are hiring people to do this? They're like, "Oh, I want a novel too as well as my perfume."
DAN: I wouldn't say it's mostly celebrities. I would say mostly what you hear about are celebrities because the public eye, and when Snooki from "Jersey Shore" is writing a novel, right? You have a pretty good idea that she didn't write that novel herself.
And I know it's generated not just some attention but some controversy when celebrities are working with ghostwriters on their novels. We can talk about that in a little second, but there's a whole other category of people who are pursuing writing novels and hiring ghostwriters or writing coaches, who aren't celebrities and not even public figures.
And they kind of fall into two main buckets. There's the dreamers, we call them, which are people who have really big ambitions. They've come up with this idea that they think is really marketable. They ideally want to have the novel turned into a movie or a TV show, but they recognize that they need professional help to do that, OK.
And they're willing to invest in that. And then the second category is the bucket list people. And these are people who just, they've had this story burning inside of them for years, and they're dying to kind of get it down on paper. And they need professional help, but their aspirations are very different. For them it's a legacy thing. It's just something they want to be able to kind of say they did it. They can share it with their friends and family. If it sells a hundred copies on Amazon, they'll die a happy person.
MIGNON: Yeah, this reminds me of a bigger picture question I had about the sharing of sort of the extension rights from a book. Does the ghostwriter typically share in the film rights on a novel? But also, does a regular ghost, a nonfiction ghostwriter share if the book is a mega-bestseller?
DAN: They do on occasion. The reality is, so let's deal with the royalties-sales part of it first. The reality is for a nonfiction book, the overwhelming majority of nonfiction books do not earn back their advance, right? So, the process is the author gets paid some money up front for the rights of their book.
Once the book sells enough that the publisher has recouped the advance, then the author will get a share of the profit, and that's called the royalty. There are very rarely royalties for books that are not written by big celebrities or brand-name CEOs. They're lucky to earn back their advance. In many cases, they don't earn back the advance.
The most in-demand ghostwriters for those projects, like, say for Keith Richards' book, or when Prince Harry worked with J.R. Moehringer on his book, "Spare," those in-demand ghostwriters can negotiate a percentage of the back end, to sort of say, in addition to what I get paid up front, if I'm going to help you sell a lot of books, then I want to get a piece of the upside, and they'll be able to negotiate a percentage.
Then, they'll also negotiate for a percentage of the derivative rights, that the argument as a business proposition being as like, “You couldn't have done this on your own. I've created a property that's generating a lot of value for you. I expect to have some of the profit.”
Now where it gets interesting is that sometimes the ghostwriter will sacrifice some upfront compensation in exchange for some of the back end, right? They're betting on themselves. And in some cases, there's not really upfront compensation in the sense that the author's paying out of pocket.
They negotiate a deal where the ghostwriter is getting a split of the advance, and then a split of the royalties, and maybe a small percentage of any derivative properties of film or television rights.
Now, when it comes to novels, if you're dealing with people who don't have a lot of capital, the authors, right? But they want professional help. What some ghostwriters, collaborators will do is to say, "Okay, I will discount the fee I will normally charge," if they see some sales potential, right? And then negotiate a bigger chunk of the back end.
And for the author, they're making a rational calculation that, "I can't do this on my own. I really need this help, and I'm willing to kind of reward the writer if they help me succeed," but there's not …
MIGNON: Yeah. That sounds risky.
DAN: There's not, again, it's not standardized at all. There's no set formula for this. It's really case by case.
I will say that the ghostwriters who have their own agents, whether it's through an agency like ours or a literary agent they work with, tend to do better, right? Because they have the benefit of someone who has negotiating skills, understands the marketplace. And again, even though it's not standardized, they have a sense of the ballparks and the structures that are often charged, and they can get the best deal for the ghostwriter.
MIGNON: Yeah. The Guardian had a really interesting series of articles on ghostwriting about fiction. And the first one I saw was about the actress, Millie Bobby Brown, who wrote a novel based on something that happened to her family. But there was a lot of backlash when it came out that she worked with a ghostwriter.
Do you know what the origin of all the backlash was?
DAN: Well, I mean, I think what social media has done has made celebrities and public figures much more accessible. And again, if you're a younger celebrity, you're probably online a lot, right? And you have a very active social media, you have a lot of followers, and those followers feel a real connection to you, right?
So if they're invested in you, and then it comes out that they bought your book and they may, some of them, and this came out in the Guardian article, has come out in other controversies around celebrities using ghostwriters for novels, is they feel cheated, right? They feel misled that you didn't write this on your own.
Now, is that a reasonable expectation? From my perspective, no, because I have intimate knowledge of the publishing industry and how these things work. For the average person, they don't have that intimate knowledge. And that said, I still think it's unfair to punish the celebrity because the reality is, if you're not a writer, you're an actor; you're not a writer. That's not your profession. And beyond that, you're not just writing a first-person essay for a website; you're writing a book, concocting a fictionalized story. Chances are, you're not able to do that on your own, whether it's working with an editor or a coach, whatever.
So even though, again, setting aside my personal knowledge of the space, I think it's unfair, a lot of this criticism. Now again, the place where it is deserved is if the author misleads their audience explicitly and says, "Yes, I wrote this book on my own," because they're ashamed or they don't want to admit they worked with a ghostwriter.
And then I think people have a lot of grounds to criticize the author because then they truly did mislead their audience.
MIGNON: And Millie Bobby Brown, she did acknowledge her ghostwriter. The name wasn't on the cover, but it was acknowledged. So I was surprised by that. I was also surprised how many older books, like apparently "The Great Gatsby," there was a ghostwriter involved, and the Jason Bourne novels were written by a ghostwriter or a collaborator at least, far more than I would have thought.
It surprises me more for fiction. But I guess maybe it shouldn't.
DAN: Well, no, I think it's understandable that it would be more surprising in fiction because, again, if someone is writing a novel, chances are they're a professional writer for the most part. And it's only, I would say in the last 20 years where you've seen this real spike in non-writers publishing novels. And so in the past, I would say it was a real outlier or unusual for a true novelist to engage a ghostwriter.
MIGNON: Yeah. And I would imagine to get this work, you would have had to have written an entire novel, at least one, yourself before anyone would hire you to do it for them.
DAN: Yes, yes. But again, there's a dividing line between a ghostwriter collaborator versus an editor in these cases can be pretty thin. And it could be like someone had a colleague that they've relied on as a sounding board or an editor, and the role that editor played evolved over time, right? Because maybe the author got stuck, or maybe the editor friend they're working with had a better feel for some of the characters and kind of took over that part of the book or helped them, the author, finish the book.
There could be different scenarios, again, where the author wasn't uninvolved in the writing of the book, but they engaged again, a colleague or another writer to help them complete it, take it to the next level, what have you.
MIGNON: Yeah. You reminded me of a big lawsuit I was reading about recently in the publishing world. Someone is — I apologize, I don't remember the details — but there was an accusation of stealing an idea. And the people who wrote the popular book said they were working on it that between the writer and the publisher, the agent, and the editor, they had these frantic working-together sessions, and they couldn't even say who had contributed which part to the book.
It was really interesting to hear about that process.
DAN: You know, and I think they were in a moment of transition, right? We're like, ghostwriting, we like to say, is coming out of the shadows. We held the first-ever convention of ghostwriters a year ago here in New York. That was the central theme of it: that the nature of the profession is changing. It's getting more publicly recognized, the stigma is fast disappearing, and the publishing world is embracing the role of collaborators in a way that hasn't happened before.
But I think we're still in this transition mode where we're not fully there yet. I think one of the longer-term goals and solutions to a lot of this is for there to be more transparency.
And not just to have a vague reference to “Thanks to Joe Smith for his help on the book.” And so it's nudge, nudge, wink, wink to acknowledge the ghostwriter, but to sort of say this person collaborated with me and to name the editor in the book. There's a big movement in the translator community for translators to be publicly credited.
And again, given the trend lines, what we're seeing in all forms of media, where the wires are hidden and people recognize that a lot of cooks in the kitchen, I think that's by far the best way: to be honest with the reading audience. And I think for the most part, they won't care, and they'll appreciate knowing that more than one person, the named author, is responsible for the creation of a text.
It doesn't. And a matter of fact, I don't think it diminishes the accomplishment of the author at all for them to publicly credit the people who helped them bring it to life.
MIGNON: Absolutely. A lot of people work on a book.
DAN: That's exactly right.
MIGNON: And you reminded me, I can't believe I forgot to mention this in the main episode, and I want to give credit because it's such a good idea. So AlexM at Mastodon (packetzero@mastodon.social) suggested there should be awards for ghostwriters, and that they should be called the Caspers, which is brilliant.
DAN: Well, funnily enough, last year, in conjunction with the first-ever convention of ghostwriters, we launched the first-ever awards for book collaborations. We very purposely didn't want it to be about ghostwriters. We wanted it to be about the partnership between the author and the collaborator.
So all the books that qualified for, or were eligible, had to be where the author and the collaborator submitted the book jointly, and they would be recognized jointly. We had three categories, and we announced the winners at the convention in January. We just closed submissions for the second year of the awards, and we called them the “Andys” because, well, the author and the collaborator, you know, yeah.
MIGNON: That's clever. Is the trophy an ampersand? No?
DAN: It was for the initial round.
MIGNON: Really?
DAN: Yeah.
MIGNON: Okay. That's great. I love that. Moving on, actually, we had two questions about AI because that comes up with everything around writing these days. So Lisa Payne and Jim Norrena both wanted to know the interplay these days between ghostwriting and AI, and if you're feeling like that industry is being affected.
DAN: Oh, totally. And I get this question all the time. So I'll preface what I'm going to say by saying that everything is fluid right now. And then, anyone who pretends that they know the future and can speak authoritatively about what things are going to happen in five or ten years, I think is full of it.
I will do my best to kind of give you a perspective about what's happening now and what I think is likely to happen. I do it with humility and with the sense that there is so much uncertainty right now. What I think is happening is there has been a disruption in the professional writing world, writ large, that AI is completely blowing up the kind of bottom level of professional writing, meaning a lot of people look for writers on Fiverr and Upwork.
There's a lot of copywriting work that is very information-heavy, SEO-based, formulaic. Okay. Those writers tend to work for cheap. A lot of them are overseas. AI can do it for free and do it, in many cases, better than those people.
So that part of the marketplace is getting radically disrupted, and a lot of that work done by humans is going to disappear. I would say then, in the second layer, is a lot of writers who are employed again for brands, for organizations, for companies, even in some media companies, the nature of their skills is still going to be valued, and there are still going to be jobs. But the nature of those jobs, I think, is starting to evolve where the responsibilities are lessened, creating the text and being the first pen to prompting the AI, and then being responsible for refining, editing, catching hallucinations, and checking for plagiarism, right? So it's more of an editor/project manager role than a pure writing role.
For the work we do, both in terms of ghostwriting full books, but also, speech writing, high-level white papers, thought leadership content, my theory is that it's going to make the work these writers do that much more valuable. Because people are going to try to use AI to do this kind of work, and they're going to fail miserably, and they're going to be very unsatisfied.
And the reason for that, first and foremost, is that the greatest value that a professional ghostwriter or collaborator provides to the client is before there's ever a word written. It's not the writing; it's the conceptualization, it's the creative dynamic, it's extracting stories from the principal. The AI can't do any of that because the AI is dependent on prompts.
So if there's no one to prompt it, and the author's incapable of prompting it, none of that value is going to be captured by the technology.
MIGNON: So they don't even know the questions they should be asking.
DAN: Right. And then, you know, one of the most valuable things that collaborators do, particularly when it comes to books, is pushing the author to go deeper, to make themselves vulnerable, to extract stories that they wouldn't initially tell on their own, or if they were just feeding transcripts into ChatGPT.
And again, I think that's the thing that people are going to recognize pretty quickly, and it's already starting to happen. I mean, we have a subset of our clients coming to us that we call AI refugees. They tried using the technology to save money and time and recognize what they got is not at the level they feel comfortable putting out in the world, and they recognize that they need to work with a professional ghostwriter. So I think it's going to make the work we do more valuable.
And then my other theory, though, is it's going to make ghostwriters more productive and profitable because elite writers will be able to do more work because they can outsource some of the time intensive, what I call blocking and tackling — the constructing of basic chapter text — to the technology because their main contribution will be in the upfront work, coming in with the hook of the book, the outline, the narrative arc, deciding which stories are going to be so, and then taking the interview transcripts, feeding into the technology, and then being in the position to refine that.
I think that's going to make professional ghostwriters and collaborators, again, more productive. It's going to allow them to take on more work and ultimately earn more money.
MIGNON: Interesting. So interesting. Well, Dan Gerstein, thank you so much for being here with us today. Where can people find you if they want more information?
DAN: Our agency website is GothamGhostwriters.com. People can reach me at dan@gothamghostwriters.com.
Always happy to do free consultations both with prospective authors who are, you know, ghostwriter-curious, as we like to say, and exploring their options. And then also for writers who are either looking to break into the field or level up their ghostwriting practice.
MIGNON:You're just the best. Thanks so much.
DAN: No, happy to be here.
I hope you enjoyed that bonus segment. If you didn't catch the full interview when we talked about ghostwriting nonfiction back in February and what a great job opportunity that can be for people,, you can find it in your feed or linked in the show notes. And thank you again to the Grammarpalooza supporters. We appreciate your help so much! If you'd like to become a Grammarpalooza supporter or subscriber and get all the bonus episodes when they first come out and more importantly just help us and show your appreciation for the show, you can sign up on the show page, the Grammar Girl Show page, at Apple Podcasts, or to get everything by text message through Subtext, and links to both of those are in the show notes and you can also find more information at QuickAndDirtyTips.com/bonus.
That's all. Thanks for listening.