Life in the shadows can be challenging, but not all ghostwriters struggle for credit.

To Be a Ghost
Life in the shadows can be challenging, but not all ghostwriters struggle for credit.

By Jessa Crispin - The Smart Set

When It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us was published in 1996, the book was met with the kind of response that a serious nonfiction writer dreams about. The ideas presented in the book became the topic of conversation across the land, politicians and commentators felt obligated to respond to it, it won awards, including a Grammy for its audio book edition, and it became so ubiquitous, both in sales numbers and in impact, that it started to become heavily parodied.

   

Any writer would be thrilled. Moved, even. And yet this particular writer also has to watch while someone else, taking credit for her work, takes all of the credit.

Hillary Rodham Clinton may have won the title page and the cover image (and the Grammy), but at best she was just one of many voices filtered through the actual writer. It Takes a Village was, of course, ghost written. The of course is the same "of course" attached to any book by a politician, major celebrity, or woman credited with one of those young adult series about pretty, wealthy white girls and their adventures that spits out 15 books a year. But it's a delayed "of course." It takes us a moment to look at the book, the author's name, and come out with "but probably not." Otherwise it would not have caused a minor controversy when Rodham Clinton admitted she did not do the actual writing per se and Barbara Feinman Todd stepped forward to take some of the credit.
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