What Do You Call Someone Who Writes a Book for You? Every Name for a Ghostwriter

In 1884, English writers were already using the word “ghost” for a person who secretly did another person’s work. By 1919 the trade had a name for the practice, ghost-writing, and by 1922 the verb had arrived. In 2017 the French Ministry of Culture published an official recommendation on what French speakers should call the job. Duden, the German dictionary, lists the English word with a German feminine form. Merriam-Webster still carries amanuensis, the Latin-rooted name for a person hired to take down someone else’s words. (More on the Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

That’s a lot of names for one trade, and every one of them confuses buyers.

I’ve ghostwritten 54+ books, and the vocabulary around this job is still a mess. People who need a ghostwriter don’t know the word, so they type “someone to write my book” or “book writer for hire” into a search bar and land on marketplace listings run by content mills. The mills know exactly which phrases confused buyers type. They buy those phrases, and the buyer ends up paying for a stranger with a template.

Think of a sandwich. Order a sub in Ohio, a hoagie in Philadelphia, a hero in New York or a grinder in New England, and you get the same long roll stuffed with meat and cheese. Only the name changes when you cross into the next county. Most of the names below work the same way, and a few of them belong to a different sandwich altogether. You want to know which before you pay.

What do you call a person who writes a book for someone else?

A ghostwriter. That’s the standard name in English for a professional who writes a book, article or speech that’s published under another person’s name, and it’s the word publishers, agents and working writers use.

Dictionary.com defines a ghostwriter as “a person who writes one or numerous speeches, books, articles, etc., for another person who is named as or presumed to be the author” (Dictionary.com). The named author is the person whose name goes on the cover, and in a well-run project that person supplied the story, the expertise and the opinions. The ghostwriter supplied the sentences.

My plain definition of the job, with both sides of it, is on What Is a Ghostwriter? A Plain Definition From Both Sides.

Ghostwriter or ghost writer: which spelling is correct?

Ghostwriter, one word. Dictionary.com lists “ghost writer” as a variant spelling, so the two-word form isn’t wrong, but the closed compound is what you’ll see in publishing contracts and on the covers of books that credit one.

The hyphenated “ghost-writer” is the older form and has mostly dropped out of American usage. I use the one-word spelling everywhere on this site.

Why are ghostwriters called ghostwriters?

Because the writer is invisible. A ghost does its work and nobody sees it, and a ghostwriter’s name doesn’t appear on the book.

The Online Etymology Dictionary dates the sense of “ghost” meaning “one who secretly does work for another” to 1884. (See also my review of the Dictionary of Word Origins) It also quotes a 1920 definition of ghost-writing as an article “written by one man upon material supplied in interview or otherwise by a second and which appears in print over the signature of such second party” (Etymonline). That 1920 description still fits my working week: interviews, material from the author, and the author’s name on the result.

Ghostwriters were at work long before the word existed, and I cover that history in History of Ghostwriting: From Ancient Scribes to Modern Bestsellers.

What does ghostwrite mean?

To ghostwrite is to write something that will be published under another person’s name. The past tense is ghostwrote, and the past participle is ghostwritten. “She ghostwrote his memoir.” “The memoir was ghostwritten.”

Etymonline dates the noun ghost-writing to 1919 and the verb to 1922, a back-formation from the noun. English did the same thing with babysit and babysitter. Writers in the trade shorten it further to “ghost,” as in “he ghosted three business books last year,” and the noun “ghost” for the writer is still common in British publishing.

A ghostwritten book counts as a real book with a real author. Readers who feel cheated by that have mostly never met a surgeon, a coach or a CEO who tried to write a book alone at eleven at night after a fourteen-hour day.

What is a ghost author?

Ghost author is another name for a ghostwriter. So are hired pen, shadow writer, silent author, uncredited writer and book writer for hire. All of them describe a person paid to write a book that carries somebody else’s name.

Back to the sandwich. These are regional names for the same roll, and none of them signals a different service. A listing that calls itself a “ghost author” or a “book writer for hire” is selling ghostwriting, and it deserves the same scrutiny: who the writer is, how many books they’ve finished, how they’ll capture your voice, and who owns the result.

If you’re comparing two listings and one says ghost author while the other says ghostwriter, you’re comparing the same service. Compare the writers instead. Look at the books they’ve finished, ask how they run interviews, and find out whether you’ll be on the phone with them or with a salesperson who has never written a chapter in his life.

Some sellers pick the odd names on purpose. “Book writer for hire” and “hired pen” rank well on freelance marketplaces, and some of the people using them bid on dozens of jobs a day and can’t show you a finished book. I think that’s a damn shame for buyers who came looking for a professional.

What does “ghosted” mean on a book?

It means the book was ghostwritten. “Ghosted” is the short verb form, and “the ghost” is the short name for the writer, a usage that runs straight back to the 1884 sense of the word and survives in British publishing.

On American covers you’ll see the same arrangement credited differently. “As told to” and “with” both identify a named writer who worked with the author, and the author’s name comes first and larger. Whether any credit appears at all is the author’s decision and a contract term, and I’ve written about how that works in Do Ghostwriters Get Credit? How Authorship Works in Professional Ghostwriting.

Don’t confuse it with the dating sense of “ghosted,” where somebody stops answering. When a ghostwriter stops answering, that’s a contract problem, and the abandonment terms in a good contract cover it.

Are a collaborative writer, a book doctor and a life story writer all ghostwriters?

No. Here the sandwich changes, and the difference matters to your wallet.

A collaborative writer, or collaborator, is a ghostwriter whose name appears on the book, on the “with” line. Publishers use the term for credited ghostwriters on celebrity and business books. A co-writer or co-author shares the byline and, in most deals, shares the royalties and the rights. I don’t do co-authored books, and the trade-offs are laid out in my comparison of co-authoring and hiring a ghostwriter.

Book doctors fix manuscripts that already exist, with heavy rewriting where it’s needed. A developmental editor reads your draft and tells you what’s wrong with its structure, and then you do the rewriting yourself. A book coach guides you while you write your own book. (See the Book Planner’s five questions) None of those three writes a book for you from scratch.

Life story writer, memoir writer, legacy writer and personal historian all describe people who help someone record their life. Some of them are ghostwriters who specialize in memoir. Others produce interview transcripts or family keepsake books in the interviewer’s words. Ask which you’re getting before you sign anything.

Is a scribe or amanuensis the same as a ghostwriter?

A scribe or amanuensis writes down what somebody else dictates. Merriam-Webster defines an amanuensis as “one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript” (Merriam-Webster). The word comes from Latin, from a phrase for a slave who did secretarial work by hand.

That’s a smaller job than ghostwriting. A scribe records words, while a ghostwriter builds the book: the structure, the chapter order, the scenes, the transitions, and the voice that makes three hundred pages sound like one person talking. AI transcription is the closest thing to an amanuensis today. I use it on my interview recordings as a digital assistant, and then I write the book myself.

What is a ghostwriter called in other languages?

German uses the English word. Duden lists Ghostwriter, with the feminine Ghostwriterin, and defines it as an author who writes for another person and isn’t named as the writer (Duden).

French has had a harder time. In 2017 the French Ministry of Culture recommended replacing an older, offensive term with “prête-plume,” which is common in Quebec, or with “plume cachée” or “plume de l’ombre,” the hidden pen and the pen in the shadows (FranceTerme, Ministère de la Culture). Spanish speakers say “escritor fantasma,” a direct translation of the English.

I love the Spanish one, since the English metaphor survived the trip intact, and the French options chase the same idea of a pen nobody sees.

Is there a job where someone writes your book for you?

Yes, and it’s a full-time profession. Ghostwriters are hired by executives, doctors, coaches, athletes, founders and families, and plenty of the business books and celebrity memoirs you’ve read had one behind them.

I work on several books at once, each at a different stage, and I take six to eight clients a year. The work is interviews, research, outlining and drafting, and most of it happens on recorded calls where I ask the author about the same events from several angles until the story holds together. If you want to know how big the trade is, I’ve covered it in How Big Is the Ghostwriting Industry, and Why Is It Growing?.

It’s also a job that gets sold badly. Agencies put a salesperson on the phone, take the deposit, and hand the book to a writer the client never met. That model is a bad deal, and it’s why I tell people to hire a solo ghostwriter they’ve talked to themselves.

Is the author the person who wrote the book?

The author is the person whose book it is. In publishing, that’s the person whose name, story, expertise and approval stand behind every page, and the ghostwriter works for them.

Copyright law draws the line in a different place. The U.S. Copyright Office explains that for a work made for hire, “the employer or the party that specially ordered or commissioned that work is the author,” and that commissioned works only qualify in certain categories with a written agreement signed by both sides (U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 30).

A standalone book by a freelance ghostwriter rarely fits those categories, so the ghostwriter stays the legal author, and a written assignment of copyright makes the client the owner. The client’s name goes on the cover either way. Get a lawyer to check that assignment clause before you sign anything.

Online, the ethical side gets argued to death by people who’ve never hired anyone. My take on it is in Is Ghostwriting Unethical? Where the Line Really Is.

Which name should you search for when you want a ghostwriter?

Search “book ghostwriter” plus your genre, like memoir or business book, then ignore anything that won’t put you on a call with the writer who’ll write it. The genre word filters out most of the blog-post mills. If you’re writing the book yourself and want a guide, search for a book coach instead, because that’s a different job with a different price.

Whatever you type, judge the person on the call. How many books have they finished? Can they tell you how they’ll get your voice onto the page? Will they put ownership in writing? A writer who dodges any of those is selling you a keyword, and outfits that build whole businesses on confused searchers are worth avoiding.

You’ll also hear the name shift with whoever’s selling. Agencies talk about their writing team, and memoir services advertise life story writers. Ask each of them those three questions and you’ll learn fast whether you’re talking to a ghostwriter or to a middleman who’ll go find one after your card clears.

When you’re ready to talk about your book, my ghostwriting services page lays out how I work, and the Book Discovery Intensive is the first step if you want the book’s structure and chapter plan settled before anyone writes it. The Ghostwriting Hub collects the rest of this series. Call it a sub or a hoagie or a hero. You’ll know it’s right when you unwrap it and every bite tastes like what you ordered.

From the author

The Ghostwriting Advantage
Whatever you call the person, the work is getting your book written for you. The Ghostwriting Advantage is my guide to that work, from someone who has ghostwritten 54+ books.

Frequently Asked Questions