Book Editor. Ghostwriter. Collaborator.

What’s the freaking difference?

It’s actually pretty easy.

In my first semester teaching book editing at Pace University in their graduate publishing program, I got in an argument with a student about whether editors should rewrite. The student who decided to question my authority was dumb because a) I’m grading him and b) the answer is simple.

Editors don’t rewrite.

That’s the difference between editors and basically everyone else.

While an editor may suggest an in-line change or even go into a sentence and rewrite it to demonstrate a potential revision, editors should, and (especially at publishing houses) do not write or revise substantial amounts of text.

A sentence or two here and there? Sure. Maybe a paragraph. But not pages.

That being said, collaborators, ghostwriters and book doctors do rewrite directly on the page.

I know, so many terms.

A collaborator or ghostwriter writes on behalf of an author, using the author’s expertise, background, and/or personal stories to create a proposal or book for publication. This is what I do.

Personally, I don’t see a huge difference between the two terms but if you wanted to get nit-picky about it, a collaborator works hand-in-hand with an author and the writing is more collaborative (hence the name) whereas a ghostwriter is typically in a situation — like with celebrities — where the author contributes, but writes very little.

(A perfect example: on my very first ghostwriting project, the author bought a new computer to write his book but never had to open the box. I wrote everything.)

And last but not least, a book doctor is part-editor, part-ghostwriter.

I call this professional hand-holding. Most of the time, book doctors are called in by editors at publishing houses or by literary agents (or both) to help first-time authors complete their manuscripts on time or when a draft manuscript needs to be fixed substantially (more than what an editor can do) within a short amount of time.

Book doctors can and do rewrite text, and most of us work as collaborators too.

So there you go — all the terms you need to know.