The American Heritage Dictionary defines “ghostwriter” as “one who writes for and gives credit of authorship to another.” A ghostwritten book, therefore, is one written by someone other than the name that is on the cover. The practice is fairly routine these days, even among Christian authors.
Kevin DeYoung has a really helpful post today titled “Seven Thoughts on Pastors Writing Books” in which he includes some remarks on ghostwriting. DeYoung also includes a link to a conversation between John Piper and Tony Reinke from last July about ghostwriting. You can download it here, or listen to it below. Both of these are really well done, and I commend them to you. Their arguments against some kinds of ghostwriting are worth considering.
[audio:http://cdn.desiringgod.org/resources/ask-pastor-john/2013/apj-129.mp3]
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