So, unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past few weeks, you would of heard about the Zoella Scandal. This follows the news from Penguin publishers that Girl Online, Zoella's latest novel was ghostwritten.
If you are unaware of this situation; here is a little background. Zoella aka Zoe Sugg is a British vlogger who has gained thousands of subscribers over the past few years. On the 25th November, Zoe published her debut novel Girl Online and it suddenly became the fastest selling novel selling over 78 000 copies in the first week. The book follows a girl named Penny who suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks and in order to cope, her parents whisk her away to New York. It is here where she soon falls in love and all of her adventures are recorded on her online blog - Girl Online.
However, in the early weeks on December, it was announced by the publishers of her book, Penguin, that the book was in fact ghost written. Their exact quote was "to be factually accurate you would need to say Zoe Sugg did not write the book Girl Online on her own." Ghost written is when a writer writes a book which is accredited to a different person. In this case, the YA freelance author Siobhan Curham was the ghost writer yet the book was under Zoe Sugg's name.
In reaction to this, many people have expressed opinions about being betrayed and appalled by this news. As a result, it has put strain on the vlogger causing her to take a break from the internet as she tweeted in December.
Personally, I think the reaction is slightly out of control. It is a common thing for books to have been ghost written, especially for celebrities. For example, Hilary Duff's debut novel Elixr was ghost written. We all know that it is also very common that songs are not written by the artists but by someone else and I don't believe Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and other celebrities personally created their perfumes. A well know view of author is that one person sits down and writes the whole fantastic story by themselves with no help. This is untrue for all authors, including the greats. All novels will have assistance and help from editors and friends it's just the case that Zoella had more help than others. Also, do you think she had the choice? Most likely she was approached with a contract which specified the help would be given.
Why do we read books? Why is it that we love The Fault in Our Stars or The Hunger Games? Yes the style of writing is important in a novel but the majority of the reason why a books is popular is due to the reader's love with the characters and plot. Although Zoe had help with the writing of the novel, she stated that the story and the characters were all hers. In my opinion, I read a book for the story not the sentence structure so the essence of a book is important and that was all from Zoe. Moreover, her brand is massive - without this, the sales would have been considerably lower. Th reason why thousands of people bought her book was because of her brand. Which was created by her. She is the key to the success of the book.
I understand where people are coming from when they say that she owed the audience her honesty and I agree she could have possibly been a bit m,ore transparent about it. But isn't this the same as authors writing under pen names? When J K Rowling released The Cuckoo's Calling under the name Robert Galbraith was she not being dishonest to the readers then. I think this issue has been blown out of proportion and a lot of people have directed hate at Zoe when they haven't acknowledged that she is definitely not the only one to be doing this.
Again, I will state these are just my opinions and they are not intended to insult anyone. Please, if you have any ideas on this topic, comment below but keep it friendly.
Happy Reading!
Millie
I don't know everything about the situation but I think alot of people were fired up because she was so adamant on calling herself an author when she supposedly hasn't written much of the book herself. Sure, the essence of the story comes from the characters and the plot - but that's the easy part. Actually writing the book is what makes you an author (in my opinion). Also I don't think she acknowledged the ghostwriter apart from one vague line whereas the Hilary Duff book does (although not on the cover, which is weird). But that's just what I think, it was interesting seeing a different POV though! #2years
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