In January, Prince Harry's much-anticipated memoir, Spare, hit bookstores around the world, selling more than 3.2 million print copies in its first week (including more than 64,000 in Australia).
Gracing the cover was the Duke of Sussex's instantly recognisable ginger-haired visage and his famous byline.
What was missing was the name of the person who penned much of Spare: J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned ghostwriter.
As far as ghostwriters go, Moehringer is one of the world's most famous, having written Nike founder Phil Knight's 2016 autobiography, Shoe Dog, and tennis champion Andre Agassi's acclaimed 2009 memoir, Open.
As well as providing ample fodder for the royal gossip mill, the publication of Spare also brought to the public's attention a subset of the publishing industry usually kept hidden in the shadows: the ghostwriter.
'Literary ventriloquism'
More often than not, celebrity memoirs like Spare – common fixtures on bestseller lists – are a collaboration between the author (the book's subject) and a ghostwriter.
Each ghostwriting project differs from author to author, says Cate Blake, a publisher at Pan Macmillan Australia.
"It can be as hands-on as conducting interviews and producing a manuscript. It can be reshaping an existing manuscript. It can be working collaboratively with the author to develop their voice and their words on the page. It's not a one-size-fits-all process."
Before he was a bestselling novelist, Australian crime writer Michael Robotham worked as a ghostwriter, penning 15 celebrity memoirs over 10 years – some he can talk about and others he can't due to confidentiality clauses, a common feature of ghostwriting agreements.
His first ghostwritten book was the 1994 memoir of Margaret Humphreys, a British social worker who uncovered the child migration scandal that saw tens of thousands of children forcibly relocated from the UK to Australia and other countries. (The memoir, Empty Cradles, was the basis of the 2010 film Oranges and Sunshine, starring Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham.)
Robotham also served as ghostwriter for the memoirs of former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, 60s pop star Lulu, actor Ricky Tomlinson, and yachtsman Tony Bullimore, famous for his dramatic 1997 rescue by the Royal Australian Navy when his vessel capsized in the Southern Ocean.
Those he is not at liberty to discuss include, as per a 2004 article: "a major British political figure, a criminal mastermind and a real-life crime solver".
Robotham says a good ghostwriter is impossible to detect: "If I did my job properly as a ghostwriter, no one would ever recognise my fingerprints on the text … You're trying to use their words, their sense of humour, their sensibilities.
"Basically, you're trying to look at the world through their eyes. It's like literary ventriloquism."
Capturing another person's voice
Publisher Cate Blake says the ghostwriter's first task is to make an author feel comfortable to tell their story.
"They're sharing really intimate details of their lives, sometimes dramatic details, sometimes previously unspoken details — so that ability to make an author feel at ease, to make them feel confident that their story will be handled with respect and with dignity … is absolutely crucial to the whole project," she says.
Halliwell was at the peak of her fame when Robotham signed on to write her memoir in 1998.
"When I met her … she'd left the Spice Girls, and the world wanted to know why the most successful band in the world had broken up. She was one of the most recognisable people on the planet," he says.
Robotham spent seven weeks living with the pop star in her home west of London, a refurbished former monastery, providing him with an unusually high degree of access to his subject.
It wasn't all work, however. In their spare time, the pair reportedly roamed the sprawling, sparsely furnished residence on rollerblades.
"There are certain stories I can't tell," Robotham acknowledges.
After conducting somewhere between 60 and 80 hours of interviews, transcribing them and carrying out additional research – and, indeed, seeing her every morning at the breakfast table – Robotham felt right at home writing in Halliwell's voice.
"I could have written War and Peace and made it sound like Geri Halliwell. The voice is so completely inside your head that when you're rewriting and editing and there are questions, you know exactly how that person is going to answer that question and how to capture their voice," he says.
The ghostwriting skill set
Ghostwriter Summer Land's CV includes the memoirs of actor Lynne McGranger, conservationist Tim Faulkner, and Rosemary Kariuki, the multicultural community liaison officer at Parramatta Police who was named Australian of the Year Local Hero in 2021.
Land works hard to establish rapport with the subject from the outset, beginning each ghostwriting project with a series of "deep dive conversations" (conducted over Zoom owing to her location in regional New South Wales) to get to know their personality and history.
"We start at the beginning – I ask: 'Who are you? Where are you from? Do you have mommy issues, daddy issues? Tell me about your childhood, your trauma … your triumphs'," says Land, who moved to Australia from the US in 2010.
It's a process helped by Land's gregarious nature.
"I'm a people person. I am disarming. I'm raw. I know when to talk, but I also know when to listen … and I'm incredibly empathetic. That's probably the one non-negotiable skill you need to be a ghostwriter."
The issue of credit
A ghostwriter's name might appear on the cover or the title page – or nowhere at all. Some authors seek full credit, demanding confidentiality from their ghostwriter.
"It's not for the ego-driven writer," says Carrie Hutchinson, whose ghostwriting credits include Richard Wilkins's 2011 memoir Black Ties, Red Carpets, Green Rooms.
While Agassi's autobiography received rave reviews (the New York Times hailed Open as an "uncommonly well-written sports memoir"), Moehringer reportedly never sought cover or title page credit.
"The midwife doesn't go home with the baby," he said at the time. "It's Andre's memoir, not our memoir."
But Moehringer's ghostwriting has not gone entirely uncredited. Both Agassi and Prince Harry used the acknowledgements in their memoirs to offer thanks to the writer, who they each describe as a friend.
Other authors (and their publishers) are happy to publicise the involvement of a ghostwriter.
Summer Land's name appears below Rosemary Kariuki's on the cover of A Joyful Life, for example.
Mental health and motivational keynote speaker Chelsea Pottenger is also up-front about Land's contribution to her 2022 book The Mindful High Performer.
Land says Pottenger didn't want to set unrealistic expectations about what's achievable for someone who juggles the demands of running a business, studying and parenting — but also, she acknowledged that she didn't have the skill set.
"I really like her take on that," Land says.
Fact or fiction
The issue of truth in memoir is a fraught one.
Michael Robotham says he always asked for honesty from his subjects: "I want to hear everything, warts and all."
While Robotham says a ghostwriter should crosscheck things like dates and places, a person's memories are harder to fact-check.
"When you're writing someone's autobiography, it's their truth," he says.
In If Only, Halliwell detailed her battles with eating disorders and breast cancer.
"Geri was very honest in her book," says Robotham.
However, an author is not obligated to disgorge all the skeletons in their closet.
"[If an event] had some profound effect on their later life, then I would push very hard for that to be included," says Robotham.
"But if it's the sort of thing that's just going to become a tabloid headline and completely overwhelm … the other parts of the story, then people have the right to leave bits out if it's going to hurt family members or people they love."
Robotham worked with one author who was later revealed to have been egregiously dishonest about his past: Australian entertainer Rolf Harris.
Robotham served as ghostwriter for Harris's 2001 autobiography.
In 2014, a British court convicted Harris of the sexual assault of four underage girls.
While Harris never hinted at his crimes, Robotham says the entertainer was "bleak" during their interviews.
"In public, he was larger than life, clowning around, wisecracking. But in private, when I was trying to talk to him about his life and career, he seemed depressed."
Robotham was "shocked and angry" when Harris was convicted. "It was a book I took off my shelf … I don't acknowledge having written it," he says.
Is ghostwriting cheating?
Robotham disagrees with the belief held in some quarters of the reading public that ghostwriting is a form of cheating.
"Just because someone has lived an extraordinary life doesn't mean they can write," he says.
"How disappointing would it be if you picked up an autobiography of someone you'd always admired, and because they're not a writer, they simply cannot get their life and thoughts down the way they'd like to."
A book like The Happiest Man on Earth by Holocaust survivor and peace campaigner Eddie Jaku OAM may never have been published without the help of a ghostwriter, says publisher Cate Blake.
"Eddie would have been absolutely … capable of writing his own book – he's an incredible storyteller, and he was a real wordsmith, but he was 100 years old when we were writing it.
"To have someone who could take a bit of the admin and the brass tacks work off his plate was an absolute asset in getting that book to print."
It's a misapprehension that the words don't belong to the author in a ghostwritten autobiography, or the ghostwriter does all the work, says Blake.
"Readers shouldn't feel that the process has been made easy or that they've been sold short in some way because, actually, it allows the author to tell their story in a larger and more multidimensional way than they might otherwise have been able to."
Land agrees. "What I'm writing is someone's lived experience. It's their wisdom. It's their heart. It's their soul. It's their perspective. It's not me; it's them. I'm just able to present it and package it in a way that can resonate with the world.
"Reading is the quickest way to reach the most … people – and that's what I help them do. I just help them get their message to more people."
