0:03

You're listening to a podglamorate

0:05

original. These

0:19

days it seems like everyone has a

0:21

book. My book is called The Light

0:23

We Carry. Now Britney Spears' new memoir,

0:25

she writes about her marriage, the conservatorship,

0:27

the free Britney movement. Now

0:30

the 38-year-old Prince Harry is telling his

0:32

own story in a new memoir coming

0:34

out Tuesday called Spare, a nod to

0:36

his... From celebrities like Michelle

0:39

Obama and Dolly Parton, Jada

0:41

Pinkett Smith to Prince Harry and

0:43

of course Britney Spears. But

0:46

are all of these household names

0:48

actually writing their own memoirs? Now

0:51

the ghost writer who helped Prince Harry

0:53

write the explosive memoir Spare has spoken

0:55

out of what it was like working

0:58

with the Duke. In

1:00

an essay for The New Yorker,

1:02

J.R. Mo Ringer has detailed his

1:04

close relationship with the royal and

1:07

an explosive fight that almost ended

1:09

their professional relationship. Today

1:12

we're peeling back the curtain on

1:14

one of the publishing industry's longest-held

1:16

secrets that's clearly not

1:19

so secret anymore. Welcome

1:30

back to Missing Pages. I'm

1:32

your host, literary critic and writer

1:34

Bethann Patrick. This is

1:37

the podcast where we examine some of

1:39

the most surprising, industry-shaking controversies in the

1:41

literary world and try to make sense

1:44

of them. This

1:46

is the first episode in a

1:48

two-part series about a lesser-known aspect

1:50

of the publishing industry, ghostwriting. On

1:53

today's episode, we'll be diving into

1:56

all things nonfiction and next week

1:58

we'll explore the even more yo

3:47

of gotham ghost writers a rating

3:49

agency that paris clients have all

3:52

kinds with seasoned ghost riders a

6:00

solidified industry so much as

6:02

it was a side hustle. But

6:04

now I think you find people who

6:07

are true craftspeople, they're talented writers, they're

6:09

able to give voice to

6:11

a lived experience or a

6:13

perspective that demands

6:16

full attention and deserves

6:18

a 300-page runway

6:20

in order to share

6:23

that story with a reader in a meaningful way. When

6:26

we look at it that way, it would make

6:28

sense that ghostwriters are everywhere, especially

6:31

for celebrity memoirs. How

6:33

else could you get Paris Hilton or

6:35

Prince Harry to really put pen to

6:37

paper? Unless they were a

6:39

writer, I can't imagine how they wrote a book. That's

6:43

John Sternfeld, who co-authored New York

6:45

Times bestseller, Scenes from My Life

6:47

with Michael K. Williams, and has

6:49

worked on a whole host of

6:51

nonfiction books. So unless you're a writer,

6:53

I'm thinking like Tina Fey. Right. She

6:56

wrote a book which was great, and obviously she wrote it because

6:58

she's a writer. For the rest

7:00

of the memoirs out there? But just

7:02

because you're famous and you have a

7:05

story to tell, it doesn't automatically translate.

7:07

Ghostwriters are an essential tool in the

7:09

well-oiled machine of writing many celebrity nonfiction

7:11

books. For many people, being

7:14

able to place their greatest hardships

7:16

and accomplishments onto the written page

7:18

is difficult. It's not like

7:20

these people aren't talented or smart or articulate. It's

7:22

just writing a book is a very hard thing.

7:24

It's a technical thing. And if you've never done

7:27

it before, it's really hard to do. So

7:29

you have this sort of integral cog of the

7:31

book world that exists for

7:34

the grace of disappearing. And

7:36

when the book goes to the printer, we disappear. Unlike

7:40

the name of a book editor or art

7:42

director, you just have to look a

7:44

little more closely to find them. They're

7:46

everywhere and nowhere. They are an integral

7:48

part of nonfiction books in the same

7:50

way agents and publicists and art directors

7:53

are. But the very nature of the

7:55

job is that they don't

7:57

seek publicity. starting

8:00

to use the word collaborator more.

8:03

It's a more neutral term and

8:05

perhaps a better representation of

8:07

the all-encompassing role that ghostwriters take

8:09

on. But in certain ways,

8:12

they are ghostlike. They

8:14

have knowledge that often they can't

8:16

voice. They exist in a liminal space

8:18

between private and public. It

8:21

is common for ghostwriters to sign

8:23

NDAs. They are exposed to

8:25

confidential and proprietary information about their clients.

8:27

The higher you go up in the

8:29

public figure food chain, the

8:31

tighter the NDA is and the

8:34

demands for privacy and confidentiality. That's

8:37

Dan number one again, Dan Gerstein.

8:39

He's found that in recent years,

8:41

the need for secrecy has sort

8:43

of softened. The people who are kind

8:45

of clinging on to the NDA are

8:47

I think people who are just

8:50

very cautious about their public persona.

8:53

And in many respects, the

8:55

NDA is not so much

8:57

about denying the existence of the

8:59

ghostwriter at all. It's more about

9:01

making sure that their personal details

9:04

are protected. Now that is

9:07

so interesting because I bet many

9:10

of us would assume, like you

9:12

were saying at the beginning, that

9:14

an NDA is so someone can

9:16

say, I wrote this all by

9:19

myself. But instead you're saying it's

9:21

about making sure, for instance, if

9:23

the ghostwriter, the collaborator is with

9:25

the client and something happens in

9:28

the other room, they can't talk

9:30

about it. That's right. If you're talking

9:32

about like Marc Benioff at Salesforce, which

9:34

I know about because a writer we

9:36

work with collaborated on his first big

9:39

book, that writer, if they're in that

9:41

trusted, intimate relationship that is the

9:43

norm, they're going to get exposed to

9:45

proprietary secrets. That's something they have

9:48

to be very, very careful with. So

9:50

it's not just sort of the personal

9:52

details. There's often very sensitive business information

9:54

that gets shared. But then there definitely

9:56

are a subset of those

9:58

cautious businesses. leaders, celebrities,

10:00

public figures who are insecure and

10:03

they don't want anyone to know

10:05

that they had help. But

10:07

does that mean there should be stigma to

10:10

the job and to hiring a ghostwriter? John

10:13

Sternfeld hopes for a change. So it

10:15

would be nice if people accepted

10:17

ghostwriters as sort of a necessary

10:20

cause. To me, I can't

10:22

really think of much of a distinction

10:24

between a ghostwriter for a celebrity and

10:27

say a stylist or makeup

10:30

artist. Despite their Instagram captions,

10:33

most celebs probably did not wake

10:35

up like this. I think a stylist

10:37

was an interesting comparison that you made that some

10:40

people like the mystery of thinking their favorite celebrities

10:42

walked out of bed looking like that but some

10:44

of them are kind of curious how it actually

10:46

works. So maybe ghostwriting

10:48

should be seen as just a normal

10:50

part of the process. I mean,

10:52

publishing a book is always a team sport.

10:55

At the end of the day, if you

10:57

don't use a ghostwriter, you're still using an

10:59

editor, a production editor, a copy editor, an

11:01

artist to do the cover, a layout designer.

11:03

So it's not like you created the book out

11:06

of whole cloth. So it seems weird that we

11:08

draw this arbitrary line of bye. If anybody

11:10

actually helped you with the writing, that's different. I

11:13

don't really think it is. Celebrity

11:15

stylists aren't going away anytime

11:17

soon and neither are

11:19

ghostwriters. So what's it like

11:21

to be the ghost behind some of the best-selling

11:24

memoirs? That's after the break.

11:34

Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, co-host of the Slate

11:36

Culture Gab Fest. Every week on

11:38

the Gab Fest, Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner and

11:40

I discuss the week in culture from highbrow

11:42

to pop and everything in between. You

11:45

can tune in to hear us analyze the

11:47

latest movies, TV shows, music, and whatever articles

11:49

happen to be blowing up in your social

11:51

media feeds. We cover it all

11:53

and we never shy away from a healthy debate.

11:56

The New York Times book critic Dwight Garner has

11:58

said the Slate Culture Gab Fest is one of

12:00

the highlights of my week. We hope

12:02

that you will give us a try. Please listen and

12:04

subscribe to the Slate Culture Gab Fest wherever you get

12:06

your podcasts. In

12:11

need of a good read or just want

12:13

to keep up with the books everyone's talking

12:15

about? NPR's Book of the Day podcast gives

12:17

you today's very best writing in a pocket-sized

12:19

show. Whether you're looking to engage with the

12:22

big questions of our times or temporarily escape

12:24

from them, we've got an author who will

12:26

speak to you. Catch today's great books in

12:28

15 minutes or less on the Book of

12:30

the Day podcast only from NPR. For

12:59

over 15 years, host

13:01

and podcasting Hall of Fame

13:04

inductee, Mignon Fogarty, has been

13:06

helping listeners remember tricky grammar

13:08

rules like less versus

13:11

fewer and joy

13:13

in weird language history like

13:15

the surprising histories behind the

13:17

common words amok and bimbo.

13:20

My favorite part? Her episodes are

13:22

all short and sweet so you can

13:24

fit them into your busy schedule. So

13:27

go ahead, listen to Grammar Girl

13:29

wherever you get your podcasts and

13:32

tell them I sent you. Chapter

13:38

2, The Literary

13:40

Chameleon. How many

13:42

books have you worked on in

13:44

this way and can you tell us about

13:46

some of your clients? I've

13:49

decided that it's probably not cool to count

13:51

when I got to this level.

13:54

That's Daniel Paisner once again. He writes

13:57

novels and hosts a podcast that is all

13:59

about ghost writers. It's called

14:01

As Told Too. He

14:03

hears from a lot of ghost writers

14:06

and he's a pretty seasoned ghost writer

14:08

himself. So I stopped counting a

14:10

while ago the last time I updated my

14:12

website but I think it's around 70 books.

14:15

Those are 70 books of mine so maybe 60

14:18

or so are in collaboration

14:20

with other folks. He's

14:22

written a book with Ray Lewis and

14:25

politicians like John Kasich and

14:27

Koch. George Bataki. Pioneers, influencers,

14:29

business leaders, people like Damon John. I've

14:31

done a bunch of books with Damon

14:33

who's now on Shark Tank making a

14:35

bunch of noise there and it's been

14:38

an interesting ride. And

14:40

he's written for the goat.

14:43

And I've written for a variety

14:45

of people ranging from athletes

14:48

like Serena Williams. Um

14:50

you're not a black woman I'm pretty sure, pretty

14:53

sure. I am not. I

14:56

don't know if there's a video to accompany

14:58

you this on your YouTube platform but as

15:00

your listeners and viewers can see I am

15:02

not a black woman. Serena

15:05

Williams's book My Life, Queen of

15:07

the Court came out in 2010

15:10

and Paysner's name is on the cover

15:12

alongside that of Williams. From

15:15

Paysner's perspective being a good ghost is

15:17

all about the craft of embodying the

15:19

voice of your client. That

15:21

is what makes ghost writing so important

15:23

for bringing a good book to life.

15:25

I came to the conclusion early on

15:27

that in these types of books if

15:29

this is the story that

15:31

this person wants to put out into the world

15:34

my job is to help him or her. Paysner

15:36

told the New York Times that he knows

15:39

celebrity memoirs will sell like hotcakes and

15:41

then most will end up in the

15:43

bin for the one dollar discount cart

15:45

at your favorite used bookstore. But

15:48

this is part of the transaction it's how

15:50

I make a living. I'm trying to extract

15:52

a living from this skill that I

15:55

stumbled upon and if I

15:57

have a hole in my schedule and the winner

15:59

of the first season of The

16:01

Apprentice calls and wants me

16:03

to write his book, which I did, Bill

16:05

Rancic, lovely guy, but nobody's caring about that

16:08

book now. In the moment, it became a

16:10

Times bestseller. That's a good example of one

16:12

of those books that we had to get

16:14

out quickly while his star

16:17

was shining bright. We had to

16:19

get that book onto shelves and I knew nobody was

16:21

gonna read that in a year or two years, but

16:23

that doesn't mean I couldn't make it as good as

16:25

it could possibly be. How

16:27

does it feel about those books that wind up

16:30

in the dustbin? Is that difficult

16:32

or is that just part of the

16:34

cycle of book publishing? You know, it's

16:36

part of the transaction. I wouldn't

16:38

be doing this for 30, 35

16:40

years, I've lost count, if I had an

16:42

ego or if I worried so much about

16:45

posterity. You know, if I look on

16:47

my bookshelf, there are probably 15 or

16:50

20 books that I'm enormously proud of that

16:52

I think will be read 15 or 20

16:54

years from now and I

16:56

approach those 15 Minutes of Fame books

16:58

just as eagerly and enthusiastically and determined

17:01

to do a good job as I

17:03

do with these books that I hope

17:05

will be read for a long, long time. What

17:08

distinguishes the books bound for the

17:10

bin and the long time re-shelvers?

17:12

Well, for one, is someone enjoying

17:14

their 15 Minutes of Fame

17:16

a la reality TV contestant

17:19

or do they have staying power? But

17:22

it goes beyond that. If the

17:24

book is the story of a big-time

17:26

celebrity or influencer, the success of the

17:28

book depends on how deep they want

17:30

to go. You know, I'm only

17:32

as good, I'm only able to be as

17:34

good as my

17:37

subject is is able

17:39

to allow and by that I mean

17:41

if they're not willing to go there, I

17:44

can't go there on their behalf.

17:46

If they're not insightful or reflective,

17:48

I can't be insightful or reflective.

17:51

If they can't really put me in

17:53

their frame of mind when some critical

17:56

thing happened in their life, I can't

17:58

do that for them. For them,

18:00

the example I often cite just to

18:02

bring up Serena Williams again, and please,

18:05

your listeners should know this is not a

18:08

knock on Serena at all. She was a

18:10

delight to work with, and she's the Gulch,

18:12

right? But her book came

18:14

out the very same year that Andre

18:16

Agassi's book came out. Andre

18:19

Agassi is an eight-time major champion

18:21

and an Olympic gold medalist, as

18:23

well as a runner-up in seven

18:25

other majors. He is widely considered

18:27

one of the greatest tennis players

18:29

of all time. His book

18:31

was ghostwritten, or collaborated on, with

18:33

J.R. Moringer, the same writer who

18:36

worked with Prince Harry. Agassi's

18:38

book, Ten Years On, Twelve Years

18:40

On, is still considered one of

18:42

the greatest sports memoirs of

18:44

the last 20 years. It's

18:47

raw, it's brave, it's

18:50

ugly, it's emotional. It's

18:53

amazing what you're revealing in this book. You

18:55

talk about so many things that, you talk

18:57

about hating tennis. You talk about

19:00

that you've hated the sport, which

19:02

is shocking to people that you

19:04

hated it. Yeah, well, it

19:06

is. It was shocking to me. You know, when I

19:08

retired, I turned a hard lens on myself and realized

19:10

that, you know, tennis was never something I chose. And

19:13

he bled on that page. He

19:15

worked with J.R. Moringer, who got a

19:17

lot of press this season for having

19:19

worked with Prince Harry quite famously. So,

19:21

that Agassi book was much better than

19:23

the book I wrote with Serena. Is

19:26

that because J.R. Moringer is a better

19:28

ghost writer than I am? Maybe. That's

19:31

possible. He has a Pulitzer Prize.

19:33

I don't. But what's more likely,

19:35

and what I choose to believe

19:37

is the case, is he was

19:39

working with a subject who was

19:41

willing to take risks. You

19:43

know, Serena was a brand. She'd been a

19:45

brand since she was six, seven, eight years

19:48

old. She'd told the same story

19:50

over and over again since she was six, seven, eight

19:52

years old. She was upholding a

19:54

family legacy. She wasn't just writing for

19:56

herself. She had people who were reading

19:59

over her shoulder. Agassiz was

20:01

willing to torch all of that. He

20:03

was willing to throw his father

20:05

under the bus. He was willing to throw the

20:07

sport of tennis under the bus. And

20:09

at the other end, he had a

20:11

book that was

20:14

searing and strong and

20:17

memorable. And it stands the

20:19

test of time a little bit better than the

20:22

book I wrote with Serena. So it's

20:24

a two-way street. I think you have

20:26

to operate as a reader and

20:29

as a publisher, or an editor, when you're

20:31

choosing a collaborator,

20:34

you have to operate from the place of

20:36

assumption. You've got to assume that anybody who's

20:38

done this a time or two knows what

20:40

the hell they're doing. And the key is

20:42

finding a good match. Can

20:45

this person get the celebrity

20:47

subject to relax and to

20:49

open up and to trust him or

20:51

her with the story? Because if they

20:53

can't, the book is never going to

20:55

be as good as it could be.

20:59

So the art of collaborating or ghostwriting

21:01

a memoir is really about getting the

21:03

right ingredients and executing the

21:05

recipe right. And

21:07

the same goes with collaborators on cookbooks.

21:11

That's after the break. Chapter

21:21

3. Credit Where Credit

21:23

Is Due. I

21:25

do sometimes get credit on the covers of the

21:27

book or inside of the book. I think

21:30

when you have a good relationship with the

21:32

chef and they appreciate the work you do,

21:34

that's in my experience, at least, have been

21:36

eager to give me credit or to thank

21:38

me and the acknowledgement. So, you know, it's

21:41

not exactly a ghost job. I'm

21:43

not invisible. names

22:00

like April Bloomfield, Masaharu Muramoto,

22:03

and Gregory Gourdé. And

22:05

those are just a few. So

22:07

what does it take to be the

22:09

top chef of cookbook writing? His

22:12

answer surprised me. Because

22:14

cookbooks, of course, are such a personal document.

22:16

When you buy a cookbook, you want to

22:18

feel like the chef in your kitchen. They're

22:21

telling you their stories as they saute and

22:23

grill. So the secret

22:25

sauce to cookbook ghost writing is

22:27

similar to coaxing a good memoir

22:29

out of a celebrity or politician. But

22:32

of course, it involves different tools.

22:35

George Saunders is a fiction writer. He wrote

22:37

this book about storytelling called The Swim in

22:39

the Pond in the Rain. And I actually

22:41

have this quote, and I think it applies

22:43

to rusty writing, too. In

22:46

a strange way, that's the whole skill, to

22:48

be able to lapse into a reasonable impersonation

22:50

of your self-reading as if the prose in

22:52

front of you, which you've already read a

22:55

million times, was entirely new to you. It's

22:58

a little bit of world building, but for

23:00

George Saunders, he's working with, you know, satin

23:02

and velvet, and I'm working with plastic and

23:04

sticks. But

23:06

unlike, say, a celebrity's life

23:08

story, celebrity chefs actually cook.

23:11

So why would they need help copying down

23:14

a recipe? People

23:16

are sometimes confused by the

23:18

idea that the chefs might

23:20

need someone to help them

23:22

write their books, especially the

23:24

recipe portion of the books, because

23:27

you might assume that the chef is the

23:29

one who's a great cook and can clearly

23:31

communicate what they do in the kitchen to

23:34

someone who might not be such a great cook.

23:36

But it turns out they can't, or they can't

23:39

always do it themselves without help. And part of

23:41

my job is to sort of

23:43

be that bridge between the

23:45

person who is really good at cooking and

23:48

the person who may not be. A big

23:50

part of my job is asking the chef

23:52

all sorts of dumb questions about

23:55

what they're doing and why they do it in the kitchen.

23:58

And I also help them tell their stories. as

24:00

well. And for good,

24:02

the process of communicating a recipe

24:04

is storytelling. You have to put yourself in

24:06

the mind of someone who's not the writer,

24:09

right? In some cases, I've seen the chef

24:11

make the dish. The best

24:13

cookbooks are the ones that are the most fun are

24:15

the ones where I get to like stand next to

24:17

the chef while they're cooking because that's

24:20

fun and then I get to eat what they make. But

24:22

then I also have to write the

24:25

recipe as if I had not seen

24:27

them fold the dumpling wrapper in a

24:29

particular way. You have to really imagine

24:31

someone who has never seen the dish

24:33

being made. So in that sense, I

24:35

think there's similarity there. But

24:38

like a collaborator on a memoir, Goode

24:40

wants to make sure he's still representing

24:43

the chef. Forgive one more

24:45

food pun. The ingredients need to

24:47

be proportional. I think there

24:49

are some projects where the ghost writer does

24:51

much more than I do. I think they

24:54

do sort of recipe development in that

24:56

the food looks like it's from the

24:58

person whose name is biggest on the

25:00

cover. But I think that

25:03

food is actually being developed and

25:05

designed by the collaborator. I

25:07

think you can tell the majority of the

25:09

work is not being done by the person

25:11

whose book it ostensibly is. When a cookbook

25:13

really hits and it really feels right, and

25:16

readers are loving the food, I think it's

25:18

because either it's because the chef is particularly

25:20

good at communicating what they do or that

25:22

the relationship with the co-writer or ghost writer

25:24

in a particularly good one. So I think

25:27

it's about the quality of the product. Whether

25:30

it's the most personal details of someone's

25:32

life or the recipe for a cake

25:34

that takes you on a journey and

25:36

delivers you to a delicious conclusion, the

25:38

collaborator or ghost writer's job is a

25:41

balancing act. They need to

25:43

represent the authentic experience of the chef

25:45

or reality TV star and, all

25:48

the while, the ghost writer needs to

25:50

put themselves in the shoes of the reader

25:52

who wants to be entertained and provided

25:54

for with clear prose. It's

25:56

a topic that's been taboo in publishing

25:59

for years. But I hope this

26:01

episode, in the smallest way, moves us

26:03

towards understanding that nearly all works

26:05

are acts of collaboration. Artists

26:08

like Michelangelo and Rembrandt relied

26:10

heavily on assistants to do their work. How

26:13

could they have completed such masterworks

26:15

otherwise? Collaboration in

26:18

art continues to this day. In

26:21

2023, the New Yorker peeled back

26:23

the curtain on painter Kehinde Wiley,

26:25

the legendary artist who completed the

26:27

portrait of Barack Obama. Wiley

26:30

relies on studio assistants to do a

26:32

lot of the groundwork for his paintings, and

26:35

it's a core part of his business plan. How

26:37

else could he produce the amount of work

26:40

to meet the demands for his art?

26:43

Does that mean the work isn't solely

26:45

his, or that audiences

26:47

shouldn't see it that way? The

26:50

closer you look at the idea, the

26:53

lines get blurry, almost

26:56

like beautiful oils on a canvas.

26:59

This is just part one

27:03

of our two-part series on ghostwriting. In the next episode, we

27:05

get the inside scoop on

27:08

all things fiction ghostwriting. We

27:10

talk to one of the most prominent fiction ghosts out

27:12

there and find something unexpected about

27:15

the business world of ghostwriting. That's

27:18

next on Missing Pages. Missing

27:23

Pages is a pod-glamorate original Produced,

27:26

mixed, and mastered by Chris Boniello with

27:29

additional production and editing by Jordan Aron. This

27:32

episode was produced by Claire Tai. This

27:35

episode was written by Lauren Delisle and

27:38

Claire Tai. Fat Checking by

27:40

Douglas Raceman. Marketing

27:43

by Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan

27:45

Swift, Vanessa Ullman, and Annabella Pena. Art

27:49

by Tom Grillo. Produced and hosted

27:53

by Miele, Bethann Patrick.

27:55

Original music composed and produced

27:58

by performed

28:00

by Hashem Asadullahi, additional

28:02

music provided by Epidemic

28:04

Sound, executive produced

28:06

by Jeff Umbro and The Podglomerate.

28:10

Special thanks to Dan Cristo,

28:12

Matt Keeley, Grant Irving, Daniel

28:14

Paisner, Madeline Morrell, Daniel

28:17

Gerstein, John Sternfeld, JJ

28:20

Good, and Andrew Crofts.

28:23

You can learn more about missing

28:25

pages at thepodglomerate.com, on

28:27

Twitter at Miss Pages Pod and on

28:29

Instagram at Missing Pages Pod. Or

28:32

you can email us

28:34

at missingpagesatthepodglomerate.com. If

28:37

you liked what you heard today, please let

28:39

your friends and family know and suggest an

28:41

episode for them to listen to.