Ghostwriters scare up six-figure deals for memoirs

While celebrities such as Victoria Beckham and Jordan have cashed in by selling their life stories, consumer demand is fuelling untold riches for the little-known ghostwriters who penned their books.

They, too, are cashing in, according to new figures which reveal that you don't need, and should perhaps steer clear of, literary brilliance to make money in publishing.

This month's Bookseller magazine has revealed that of the 10 bestselling non-fiction books so far this year, half were written by so-called ghosts. Mark McCrum, ghostwriter of Robbie Williams' autobiography Somebody Someday earned a 200,000 advance, plus a share of the profits. The sum dwarfs the 20,000 to 25,000 a talented literary novelist can earn in advance of publication.

Even the most sought-after writers are now being left behind.

Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai is thought to have been paid an advance of 20,000 by Penguin for The Inheritance Of Loss, being trounced in the earning stakes.

Hunter Davies, the co-author of Gazza, My Story, has already earned 80,000 for his work on Wayne Rooney's autobiography, the first instalment in a five-book deal to be completed in the next 12 years.

For his fee, Davies had to complete 50,000 words before the World Cup and 10,000 within 24 hours of the end of the tournament.

Jenny Erdal, who worked for a London publisher while ghosting autobiographies, and wrote a novel, Ghosting, about her experiences, said: "It's my impression that publishers increasingly have ghostwriters on their books. It's not just celebrities like Jordan that sell, sports figures like Rooney make headlines because there's such a lot of money involved.

"It's become such a growing trend because people think they can write and they cannot. It comes from the assumption writing is easy."

She added: "It's hard to survive as a novelist in your own right, and so increasingly ghosting has become far less underground."

Scotland on Sunday's literary editor, Stuart Kelly, said: "If by hawking some second-hand words by Jordan, a publisher gets enough profit, then perhaps they might invest that in new literary talents, or at least pay established authors something approaching a living wage. But it is a gamble. For every bestseller there's a clutch of duds."