Not always the book was written by a person whose name is on the cover, the article is not always written by those whose name is in the author’s column. Even the one who writes himself/herself usually has assistants.
Different texts, speeches, business letters, articles and books to businessmen, managers and politicians are written by experts, including advertisers, PR people, professional writers, ghostwriters (speech writers) and personal assistants. This is the essence of the freelance academic writing jobs, when a writer helps someone to write some kind of written work, be it an essay, an article or a book. In this case, we can safely talk about such a phenomenon as a ghostwriting.
Who is a ghostwriter?
A ghostwriter is a person who writes books, articles, any written work for others (on behalf of others), or participates in writing them, although his/her participation is not publicized. Therefore, such a specialist is called a ghost. Often, the ghostwriter writes custom texts for another person, who, in turn, further produces this text for his/her own.
In our days, ghostwriting has become not only an acceptable norm, but also a rapidly growing business. Moreover, the majority of books for politicians, actors and even scientists are written by ghostwriters, the business of “phantom authors” has now grown to such an extent that it offers services of writing absolutely any material.
There are the following types of ghostwriting:
Copywriting: writing advertising texts.
Speechwriting: writing speeches, presentations exclusively for politicians and senior government officials.
Songwriting: writing songs and poems.
Rewriting, paraphrase: rewriting texts.
Text processing: reduction, addition (writing).
Is Ghostwriter just a writer or is it an author?
It is important to understand that ghostwriting concerns mainly authorship. But, in order to understand this, it is necessary to find out what is the difference between an author and writer?
The writer often works under web and SEO tasks. That is, the writer writes the content to fill the sites with a variety of requests. He/she works in all subjects and niches equally confidently. A writer is a copywriter, a rewriter, and a journalist. He/she is universal.
An intelligent writer writes texts for websites, compiling them from several sources, “ogling”, “rolling in” and “honing” for current tasks (for example, text for displaying a website on the top or selling text for contextual advertising for one-page).
The writer seeks and gives the answer. Commercial freelancing writing is designed to intensify consumer actions related to the purchase of goods and services.
The author usually works with an impressive number of primary sources. Even if it is just a memory. The result is a book or a series of books. This could be fiction, documentary, serious popular science research or something else. The author masterfully implements a large project on the basis of an efficient and streamlined writing scheme for a book.
The author implements large-scale ideas, his/her activity has little in common with shock releases of news materials every day or every hour.
The writer’s creativity is far from generating memorable advertising slogans and lyrics, as well as the development of selling texts or SEO-content.
Of course, a good author may well take up the work of a writer if he/she has the ability to switch the “tumbler” of thinking. However, most often the authors are set on a long way.
Thus, for the most part, ghostwriting relates to the authorship, since creating an artwork to order for someone, the writer completely waives his/her copyright, transferring them to another person, who officially becomes the author of this work.
Despite the scale of the ghostwriting industry, there is no major aggregator of their services and, accordingly, there is no separate algorithm for how to become a ghostwriter. Most customers find their ghostwriters on social networks or in one of the many “ghostwriter agencies”.
After payment the process of creating text begins and it’s completely controlled by you. The ghostwriter is just a freelancer, and as a result, you get nothing but the final manuscript. But you do not pay for it, but for the time of the ghostwriter.
The customer may have one meeting with the ghostwriter for the entire time of writing the book or five meetings per week. Moreover, no centralized authority controls the ghostwriters, so the customer will have to negotiate any conditions for the refund with the guest writers individually.
Why is it popular?
So, ghostwriters are expensive and difficult, and as a result, you get a book or text from a person who knows nothing about you or about what you really wanted to say. So why is this popular?
First, it is fast. Speed ??is the main advantage of using a ghostwriter. On average, authors need from 1,000 to 2,000 hours to write a book, but ghostwriters boast that they reduce this figure a hundred times, stuffing the average manuscript for 20 or even 10 hours of work.
Secondly, as a result, the customer will have a book, even if he/she cannot write. Most people starting novels never finish them.
To understand which ghostwriting jobs for beginners are better suited to you as a newbie in this activity, think about what your soul is about. Perhaps you like to influence people through the text and be able to write an amazing speech for an important official. Or maybe you dream of writing lyrics and selling them to popular bands?
In any case, before looking for the first order on the exchange, you need to create a portfolio. You may have to write a few works for someone else for free, but believe us, this will bring you success in the future.
Write, try yourself in writing, look for customers only on proven platforms, and who knows, maybe you will become the best ghostwriter for some celebrity!
