If you don’t what is ghostwriting, it’s basically writing for money. Ghostwriters take money for their writing, but not the credit for their work they have produced. The one who is the original writer hires the ghostwriter to do freelance writing for them. The original author who pays the money, takes up all the credits for the ghostwriters' work. The writer who does ghostwriting usually gets paid in advance to complete the job. He gets money as “work for hire job” and doesn’t assume any credit for the ghostwriting work.
This sounds a bit odd, but it’s pretty common practice nowadays. For example, if someone is creating a new copy of their website, a ghostwriter can hire to rewrite the website. There are a lot of similar jobs like this. For example, writing business ads, supplying written contents for personal or professional use, etc. The ghost is hired as a professional writer to supply high quality written content so it reads professionally. A ghostwriter is mostly hired as an on-staff writer or as a freelance writer who is paid to do only the writing jobs at hand.
Ghostwriters also write books. Many times a ghostwriter is hired by the original author of the books to write the book for him/her. Ghostwriter won’t get any sort of credit for the writing if not the original author wants to share some with the ghostwriter. In this case, the original author lists the ghost being the “co-writer” or the “editor”.
Ghostwriters usually work for a very high sums of money. Though recently, the competition has increased and standards have been set by third world countries such as China and India. And for bidding agencies looking for the highest bidder for ghostwriting projects, Working for high sums of money is not always the case. But in many other cases, ghostwriters usually charge 10,000$-25,000$ for writing a book for someone else. Ghostwriters are usually hired for the quality of their work and not for their names as a book writer. But there are a lot of deals a ghostwriter can make with their employers so that the both parties can bring out a fair deal when the contract is signed.
A simple example is, a ghostwriter can take a small fee for writing a book which will likely sell widely. So, For example, the ghostwriter is paid say 5000$ in advance. After the book starts selling widely, the ghost may take 5-10% of the profit overtime when the book is sold. This usually happens when the book is determined and guaranteed to sell at high profits.
Another method is, the ghostwriter will take a lower amount of the fee if the original author agrees to share the credit. But then again, it’s only when the book is guaranteed to sell well and if the ghostwriter for some reason, needs his/her name on the book as a co-author. It all depends on the original author if he or she wants to pay the ghost the full amount of money in advance or want share credits with him/her.
If you are looking for a ghostwriter, there are many online academic ghostwriting services available out there.
