Andrew Crofts, een professionele ghostwriter, heeft dit te vertellen over de grotendeels door iemand anders geschreven debuutroman van Zoe Sugg.

Crofts felt that the success of Sugg’s novel shows that “if publishers find out what people want and produce it, they get bestsellers”.

“If they publish books they love themselves and expect the rest of the world to love them too, they’re just going to starve to death. But there’s room for both, and it is no good complaining about books like this. Publishers need to find out what people want and give it to them,” he said.

Zoe Sugg is by no means the first celebrity to have been outed as not the sole creative mind behind a novel. The supermodel Naomi Campbell published Swan, her debut, in 1995, but according to rumours cited by Gilbert Adair, she had not even read it, and “had to be furnished with a 250-word synopsis in order for her to offer a credible account of its plot to journalists”. Campbell went on to admit in an interview that it was ghostwritten: “I just did not have the time to sit down and write a book”.

(Bron: The Guardian Online)

Wat mij voorts frappeert in het artikel is dat de spookschrijfster die Zoe Sugg’s hand vasthield, 8000 pond zou gekregen hebben voor een (zeer succesvolle) roman van 80.000 woorden. Slecht tarief. En dat bij Penguin!
“If editors publish books they love themselves and expect the rest of the world to love them too, they’re just going to starve to death.” Ha, de eeuwige kloof tussen kenners en leken, die net als de economische kloof tussen mensen almaar dieper lijkt te worden. Want om kenner te worden, moet je de passie hebben. “But there’s room for both.” Geldt dat alleen voor een groot taalgebied?