You've got every cookbook ever put out there by a famous chef - from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook to Tyler Florence's Eat This Book (oops, maybe that's just me). The chef's face is on the cover, he's wearing a spotless chef's jacket, and inside, the recipes are amazing.
But did the chef really write that book? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the chef. The Financial Times looks at the relationship between chefs and the "ghostwriters" behind them who polish the prose, whether or not the writer's name appears alongside the chef's name on the book's cover.
Do you think it's right for a chef to leave the ghostwriter's name off even if he or she did most of the writing?











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-21-2006 @ 4:45PM
Bonnie said...
I don't think it's wrong to leave it off the cover, as long as they're in the credits. For a lot of music artists, the producer is often the one that has direction of sound, which I would equate to be similar to feel of prose. But, unless they're Dr. Dre, they're not going to be credited like the artist. It's the recipe that counts, not the how the recipe is said.
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7-21-2006 @ 4:50PM
jason said...
if the recipe's are all the chef's then i see no reason for a ghostwriter to get any cred, they can be called the editor maybe cause most chefs didn't get a degree in writing so its doubtfull that their own writing is all that great and a more experienced writer can "clean it up"
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