Event Information

Ghostwriting

Date: 27 September 2007   Drinks: 18:30   Talk Starts: 19:30 OPuS Event

Description

Speakers: Claire Squires and Sean Magee.

Defined by the OED as ‘one who secretly does artistic or literary work for another person, the latter taking the credit’, the ghostwriter has long been a part of the publishing world. In recent years, with a book market awash with celebrity autobiographies, misery memoirs, and politician’s diaries, the role of the ghostwriter has become increasingly important, and increasingly visible.

This session will step into the shadowy world of the ghostwriter, and will look at the processes behind the creation of ghostwritten book projects. Is ghostwriting, as the Observer recently claimed, the ‘future of the book trade’? How prevalent is the practice of ghostwriting? What skills make a good ghostwriter, and how do publishers and agents manage those skills? To what extent is ghostwriting part of an editorial continuum, in which all editors routinely take part?

Addressing these questions are Sean Magee, publisher, editor and writer who has ghosted books for/with characters as diverse as Carry On actress Joan Sims and the famously uncommunicative champion jockey Lester Piggott; and Claire Squires, Senior Lecturer in Publishing at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies. Her books include Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Literature in Britain (Palgrave, 2007) and Philip Pullman, Master Storyteller (Continuum, 2006).