A ghostwriter is a writer who writes books, manuscripts, screenplays, scripts, articles, blog posts, stories, reports, whitepapers, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. In some cases, ghostwriters are allowed to share credit with the clients who hire their ghostwriting or editing services. For example, a common method is to put the client author’s name on a book cover as the main byline (By Author’s Name) and then to put the ghostwriter’s name underneath it, like this (As told to: Ghostwriter’s Name). Sometimes this is done in lieu of pay or in order to decrease the amount of payment to the book ghostwriter. Also, the ghostwriter can be cited as a coauthor of a book, or listed in the movie or film credits when having ghostwritten the script or screenplay for a film production. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written material. A highly common form of literature ghostwriters are hired for is the memoir or an author’s memoirs, which can be either nonfiction, fiction, or fiction based on fact involving relating the client’s personal history or life story. In music, ghostwriters are often used for writing songs and lyrics. Screenplay authors can also use writers to either edit or rewrite their scripts in order to improve them, increasing their chances to be optioned or produced. Also, ghost writers may work on accompanying documents, such as treatments for screenplays. Often, ghostwriters will work on related projects beyond the scope of professional ghostwriting, such as marketing, promotions, sales, publishing or other related services for pay, in order to procure more clients and increase the total amount of their business. Ghostwriters may have varying degrees of involvement in the production of a finished work. Some ghostwriters are hired to edit and clean up a rough draft, others are hired to do most of the writing based on an outline provided by the credited author. For some projects, ghostwriters will do a substantial amount of research. Ghostwriters are also hired to write fiction in the style of an existing author, often as a way of increasing the number of books that can be published by a popular author. Ghostwriters will often spend a period from several months to a full year researching, writing, and editing nonfiction works for a client, and they are paid either per page, per each word or via total word count, with a flat fee, with a percentage of the royalties of the sales, or by using some combination thereof. The ghostwriter is sometimes acknowledged by the author or publisher for his or her writing services, but often as not the ghostwriter isn’t even mentioned anywhere in connection with a ghostwriting project. A consultant or career-switcher may pay a ghostwriter to write a book on a topic in their professional area, to establish or enhance their credibility as an ‘expert’ in their field. Public officials and politicians employ ‘correspondence officers’ to respond to the large volume of correspondence. A number of papal encyclicals have been written by ghostwriters. With medical ghostwriting, pharmaceutical companies pay both professional writers to produce papers and then pay other scientists or physicians to attach their names to these papers before they are published in medical or scientific journals. Some university and college students hire ghostwriters from essay mills to write entrance essays, term papers, theses, and dissertations. This is largely considered unethical unless the actual ghostwriting work is really just rewriting, editing, some light research, or otherwise not strictly writing the paper outright for the student, who is supposed to be creating his or her own legitimate school paper. Ghostwriting (or simply “ghosting”) also occurs in other creative fields. Composers have long hired ghostwriters to help them to write musical pieces and songs; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is an example of a well-known composer who was paid to ghostwrite music for wealthy patrons. Ghosting also occurs in popular music. A pop music ghostwriter writes lyrics and a melody in the style of the credited musician. In hip hop music, the increasing use of ghostwriters by high-profile hip-hop stars has led to controversy. In the visual arts, it is not uncommon in either fine art or commercial art such as comics for a number of assistants to do work on a piece that is credited to a single artist.