Discussion/Rant :: Ghostwriting

The discussion of ghostwriting is kinda everywhere on the internet right now, because Penguin recently released that Zoella's popular book, Girl Online was ghostwritten. 

If you don't know who Zoella is, she is a full-time British youtuber with 7 million subscribers. {or 6, I'm not sure.}

To start things off, ghostwriting itself doesn't bother me. The ghostwriters know what they're signing off on. However, the particular case with Zoella does.

Zoe made a big deal on all her social media on how happy she was to be writing her own book. Everywhere it was ''my book'' and there was no mention anywhere about the ghostwriting. Only after the news came out did she get defensive and tweeted a picture saying: ''of course I was going to have help from Penguin's editorial team...'' along with more {full tweet here}

There's a difference with getting help-- which of course Zoella would need, considering her youtube/beauty line, etc--and somebody writing your book for you.

To be fair, we don't know how much Siobhan Curham, the ghostwriter wrote.... but I'm gathering from Zoella's tweet it was most of it.

Another thing that bothers me is while Girl Online, a book that has Zoella's name slapped on it, broke records. There are tons of writers out there who write one single book for years, nourishing it everyday, and then when it's finally published it goes no where. Girl Online was written in the time span of about two months. 

Also it digs at me that Zoella lied about her book. If you don't know, Elixir by Hilary Duff was ghostwritten. If you open up to the first page, the first thing you see is ''Elixir, by Hilary Duff.... with help by -----''. The only place the Curham is acknowledged is at the end credits, for ''being there every step of the way''. That's the sort of credit you give to somebody for moral support through your writing process, not for writing your book.

Any thoughts? Leave them below :)