Quote
Blue Lady
Yes, thanks I knew Charles personally back in the day. I remember him telling me he was writing his book and just knew that the SGI would promote and support it just like they were doing with everyother non-Buddhist on Middle Way Press. Somehow SGI rejected him. I do not know why. I just knew at the time his book would help members who were suffering from cancer.
Fraught with Peril – I read from time to time.
Linda I read her archived site and I remember hearing about her on ARBN or the IRG I think?

A FEW HOURS LATER I DECIDED TO REPLY TO WHAT I WROTE?

I think the book Charles refered to was Buddha in Your Mirror. It makes sense to me now. We had the talk at the Center and thats when Midway Books was getting ready to launch . He would have thought to himself since he wrote the book or at least started until the trashed it - that they would support his book on Cancer... and Mr C publisher of LB was located in the same said center... it stands to reason now.
He is right the book was dismal for me. We supported the book tour .






quote tsukimoto]

Quote
Blue Lady
on a seperate note-----
She had mention before that the new guidance book out that is paperback and yellow is not written by Daisaku Ikeda. I don’t rightly know because I have not bought it.
However yesterday at the Sophia group meeting one of the WD read from this book. I realize I have never heard guidance like that before. What I mean Pres Ikeda does not write like that or speak like that. IT was more AMERICAN thought process if you get my drift. It was for May 16th. Has anyone else gotten the impression that he has Ghost’s writers?
.

Blue Lady, have you ever heard of Lisa Jones? She's a journalist from Colorado, and a former SGI member who worked as a ghostwriter for Ikeda. She angered SGI by telling people that she was a ghostwriter. Usually, ghostwriters sign a contract promising that they will not tell anyone that they wrote the book. For this, they're paid well, probably much more than they could earn selling a manuscript of their own. She also posted an anti-SGI website. It seems that SGI's lawyers came after her. She had to quit speaking about SGI and she had to take her website down. This was in the 1990's.

This is from page 53 of this thread:

The case of Lisa Jones: She was a ghost writer for President Ikeda -- actually not an uncommon thing. According to Charles Atkins, who is quoted below, this kind of arrangement is common. Famous people often do not write their own books and speeches. Many celebrities rely on ghostwriters who are paid well for their work but receive no credit or royalties -- and this is all part of the ghostwriter's contract. Charles Atkins, who writes a blog for www.fraughtwithperil.com explains below how this works.

-----------------------Beginning of Quote, Fraught With Peril Website, Kempon Hokke Blog--------------------------------

What Lisa Jones was enountered with was this: the master of a religious organization of tens of millions, allowing professional and superbly adept minions to write books for the public forum, that would be credited exclusively to Him.

My opinion here is that there was an ethical breech at the highest possible levels in allowing this to happen. I'm quite sure Mr. Ikeda is fully capable of writing his own books and I am sure that once the work-for-hire project was finished, edited, translated back into Japanese, the book was gone over by Mr. Ikeda. That's a huge assumption on my part, as it's also quite possible that Mr. Ikeda never laid eyes on the manuscript but had a team of his most trusted editors like Ms. Shinbutsu, his personal English editor do that final bidding.

Either way, from a writer's standpoint, a $15,000 contract to sift through lectures, notes, previous works, assemble them and compose a manuscript on a subject that you're intimately familiar with, would be a dream come true. If Lisa were to put together a manuscript on Buddhism of her own, that would bear her name on the jacket, she would be lucky to get a thousand dollar advance against royalties. In truth, she might have to submit her manuscript to hundreds of publishers over the course of years before she got an offer - IF she got an offer.

That's why, a $15K deal to write a book for a world famous person is a deal that's damn near impossible to pass up. The fact that this project was offered to her speaks volumes to her level of expertise. Where the rub came in was after the fact, when the realization came that the organization was fooling the members and that burning question of how many other books were published under his name that he did not write? So, I do understand what she did and why she did it. I have asked myself many times if I would do the same and can't truly answer that question. What I can say is that I respect Lisa's guts to listen to her conscience and do what she thought was the right thing. The money and the prestige can be very tempting, but the rules are simple: if you take the money, they have bought your silence.

I do know one thing, they'll think twice before they do that again. If that's what Lisa Jones accomplished, we all owe her a debt of gratitude.

A contract writer, which I was at one time for the SGI, signs away their rights to royalities and credit. This arrangement is extremely common in professional writing. The whole idea is for an expert writer to take on an agreed upon project for pay without credit - it's standard. A ghost writer is someone who is employed on contract to write and possibly help edit a work of fiction or perhaps non-fiction. The difference between a ghost writer and a contract writer is the same as the distinction between a hooker and a call girl.

Where legal trouble emerges is when a contract writer breaks their contract and discloses the specific nature of their work for hire, thus diminishing possible sales of the published work, as well as impuning the credited author. Every writer knows this. You sign a contract as a writer for hire, you take the money, keep your yap shut, and let others take credit for your work. Standard, standard, standard.

I will say this about my own writer for hire with the SGI, without disclosing which project(s) I worked on: They paid me on time. They were very involved in the process. There were more editoral layers than skins on an onion. AND, when we were done, they didn't use a single sentence I wrote. In other words, the SGI completely wasted the members' money on a writing project that they ended up doing themselves. Their finished project of the work they contracted me to write? A best seller for them that I consider utter crap. They probably thought my submission was crap, but I have to confess that what they published was awful.

Charles, Mr. Writer for Hire, and if the price is right, I don't kiss and tell.

Posted by Charles at October 4, 2009 02:27 PM