Ghostwriting Kayfabe

Do you know how much of what you've read has been written by someone other than the person whose name is on the work?

Ferruccio Lamborghini with one of his tractors, and one of his cars. This man did not have a ghostwriter.

Do you know how much of what you've read has been written by someone other than the person whose name is on the work? You can’t, really. But I can tell you this: it’s a lot higher than you might think. Publishing kayfabe is real.

(For those who don’t know: kayfabe is a word that originated in professional wrestling to describe the portrayal of fake staged relationships or competition/rivalries as real; another way to think of kayfabe is “the protection of industry secrets”—in the world of professional wrestling, nobody is supposed to know quite what is real and what is not, or how these things are decided.)

I’ve learned more about the ghost-writing industry in the past few years than I ever wanted to know. When I signed a contract to write Wanting, I wasn’t prepared for the first question several people casually asked me: