Disclosure
Do you have to tell people you work with a ghostwriter?
It is the question people ask last, usually quietly, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring one.
The answer
That is your decision, and either answer is defensible.
The thinking is yours and the decisions are yours. What a ghostwriter does is find the words for them, and sit with you long enough to know which words those are.
Why both answers hold
The question is who decided, not who typed.
If you say nothing
Nobody assumes a chief executive writes every word of a keynote, a letter to shareholders or a board paper. The same reasoning applies here.
Common practice, quietly held.If you say so openly
Some people prefer to name it, and that works too. Saying you have help does not weaken a position you actually hold.
Also defensible.What would not be defensible
The line is not whether someone helped you write. It is whether what is published is yours.
- No engagement pods or comment farming.
- No automated posting, messaging or connecting.
- No content written to fill a number.
- No position you have not actually taken.
Nothing is published without your approval, so nothing appears in your name that you have not read and agreed to.
The part nobody asks about
Underneath all of it is judgment. What should be said. What should wait. What should never be published in your name at all.
A ghostwriter who only produces is a cost. One who occasionally tells you no is the reason the arrangement is worth having.
If you are weighing this quietly,
the first conversation is private and commits you to nothing.
Write to me