Zoella is the YouTube star behind the fastest-selling book on record whose debut novel outsold veteran authors JK Rowling and Dan Brown in its first week.
But the 24-year-old has been forced to admit that Girl Online was ghost written after becoming embroiled in an increasingly bitter online storm.
She faced accusations that another author dashed out the book in just six weeks and was paid a relatively paltry set fee with a contract that will deny her any royalties or credit.
Zoella, real name Zoe Sugg, admitted on Twitter: “Of course I was going to have help from Penguin’s editorial team in telling my story, which I talked about from the beginning. Everyone needs help when they try something new. The story and the characters of Girl Online are mine.”
A Penguin spokeswoman said that “to be factually accurate you would need to say Zoe Sugg did not write the book Girl Online on her own”. Several authors are said to have turned down the opportunity to ghost write the book, which chronicles the life of a teenage blogger, having been offered between £7,000 (Dhh40,023) and £8,000 for the job.
Zoella is more commonly known for blogging about hair and beauty. She has never hidden the fact that she had help writing her debut novel but critics point out that she had also never categorically stated that it was written by someone else. She is alleged to have hinted at the identity of the book’s true author in the acknowledgements, which read: “I want to thank everyone at Penguin for helping me put together my first novel, especially Amy Alward and Siobhan Curham, who were with me every step of the way.” Alward is an editorial director at Penguin but Curham’s role is unclear. She is a novelist and freelance writer of young adult fiction who many believe wrote the novel.
A recently deleted blog post published on her own website added fuel to the fire. In it, Curham described being asked to write a book in six weeks and her ensuing guide to writing a book fast indicated that she had written an entire novel alone, as opposed to collaborating with someone else. Neither Curham nor Zoella have responded to the allegations. However, a Penguin spokesman insisted that the post was “categorically nothing to do with Girl Online”.
Many Twitter users and bloggers expressed little surprise that Zoella’s debut novel may have been ghostwritten but said that it was time to come clean about her level of involvement. Children’s author Sally Nicholls said that those “incensed” by the issue should help by buying Curham’s own books. “Seriously, let’s do this,” she wrote on Twitter. “Imagine if you’d written the number one bestselling book on Amazon and you’d been paid four figures.”
Nicholls, author of Ways to Love Forever, said: “Ghost writing is a business and they are rarely credited but not to be offered royalties for a book that was clearly going to be so successful is shocking. You need to treat the writers with basic respect.”
