Ghostwriting can be lucrative, often involving six-figures sums. But the costs can be high as well. Ghostwriters sell not just their words, but also their ideas. In the case of Tony Schwartz, one ghostwriting gig came with an added price: his self-respect.
Schwartz is the ghostwriter of Donald Trump’s 1987 New York Times bestseller The Art of the Deal. The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer has written a profile of Schwartz, who reveals the regret and “deep remorse” he now feels over having written the book that created the myth of Donald Trump as a great business tycoon.
The first thing to know about ghostwriting is that it is much more prevalent than you might think. Most books and articles authored by sports stars and other celebrities are ghostwritten for the obvious reason that most of them are not trained writers. Politicians almost always use ghostwriters for their books, op-eds and speeches.
Sometimes even journalists use ghostwriters (although they’re generally credited as “researchers” or “editors”). Some ghostwriters do it for the money, others do it because they believe in the message. Most do it for both, though mostly for the former.
Money was Schwartz’s reason for agreeing to write Trump’s bestseller, despite his reservations. Meyer describes the ambivalence Schwartz felt in being approached to write the book.
“Schwartz thought it over for several weeks. He knew that he would be making a Faustian bargain. A lifelong liberal, he was hardly an admirer of Trump’s ruthless and single-minded pursuit of profit. ‘It was one of a number of times in my life when I was divided between the Devil and the higher side.'”
Schwartz was technically not Trump’s ghostwriter — he was given co-authorship on the book. But that’s effectively what he was since it was written as an autobiography and Trump took credit for it. Schwartz told Meyer that it seemed as if over the years Trump had convinced himself that he’d written the book.
Schwartz received a $250,000 advance for the book (Trump received the same amount), a very generous sum. But he earned his money, spending 18 months with Trump, attending meetings and spending weekends with him at his various estates.
At first, Schwartz tried to sit down and interview Trump. He found it difficult to get Trump to open up, but eventually concluded that it was because there wasn’t much substance there for Trump to reveal. Schwartz would come to regret creating the image of Trump as a “a charmingly brash entrepreneur with an unfailing knack for business.”
Schwartz finally got Trump to agree to have him accompany him everywhere in his public life and listen in and take notes. Basically he eavesdropped on Trump’s life.
By doing that, Schwartz got a window into Trump’s soul, and it was not a flattering view. He found Trump a pathological liar who is essentially transactional. “People are dispensable and disposable in Trump’s world,” Schwartz says. He saw Trump as driven not by a pure love of deal-making, but by an insatiable hunger for “money, praise and celebrity.”
Meyer reviews the myths that Schwartz created in this book, including the one about Trump as a self-made man, about his business acumen and about his supposedly flawless business instincts.
After Trump began running for president, Meyer says Schwartz considered publishing an op-ed detailing his concerns about Trump and his candidacy. “[B]ut he hesitated, knowing that, since he’d cashed in on the flattering Art of the Deal, his credibility and his motives would be seen as suspect.”
But by the time he sat down with Meyer last month, he had had too much. He felt he had to speak out, that too much was at stake for him and the country.
Schwartz says that if he could alter the name of the book, he’d change it to The Sociopath. Hardly a minor edit.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
