HOOKED ON PHONICS Fantasia

Ghostwriting is a frustrating racket. But it must be particularly galling when the person whose name appears on the cover of the book you wrote is, like American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, quite literally unable to read or write.

After holding her tongue for the past year, Kim Green, the ghostwriter of Barrino's "autobiography," is demanding some recognition for her role in bringing the illiterate singer's life story to the world. "I want people to know that I wrote that book," she says.

Barrino's Life Is Not a Fairy Tale, published in October 2005, sold more than 48,000 copies and made the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list. But Green, who was paid only $45,000 for her efforts, has received no credit for it, nor for the Lifetime movie it inspired, which aired on the network last month. She even had to buy her own ticket to a concert Barrino gave in Atlanta recently. "I just think it's a terrible statement about the entertainment business," she adds.

• The Skinny on Bosworth, Smoke Signals at Giant
• Ron Lauder's Artful Lender

Sign in to post a comment here.