About Ben Jeapes

I am a member of United Ghostwriters and have been writing all my adult life, either in parallel with day jobs in publishing and communications, or full time. Doing it this way, I have had several novels professionally published under my own name by Scholastic, Random House and Solaris, and I have ghostwritten three teen series for Working Partners, under a couple of names.

I accidentally became a non-fiction ghostwriter in the day job when a very big computer network took me on as Documentation Officer, with the task of editing and publishing technical material written by technical experts. As the experts were all, by definition, very busy and had no time to put pen to paper, I soon worked out that everyone was happier if I simply interviewed them, then wrote up their material on their behalf. 

Meanwhile a fiction editor with whom I had previously worked changed jobs and inherited a series that required a ghostwriter. She thought of me. I still kept the day job for a while longer, until finally in 2015 the ghostwriting developed into enough work that I could chuck in the day job and go full time. 

And the rest is history.

In the last three years I've researched and ghost written over 300,000 words in various series for children, teens and older teens, for clients represented by PFD and LAW, and published by Random House and Bonnier-Zaffre. Some of these I have written from scratch, some I’ve taken over from a previous ghost writer. I’ve also taken over the ghost writing of a 60,000 word autobiography from another ghost on behalf of Lion Hudson. 
Ben Jeapes bibliography

Ghost writing

  • Taming of a Villain by Allen Langham: Christian autobiography (Lion Hudson).
  • 15 x 40,000 word novels and 2 x 70,000 word novels, client’s name withheld (Random House).
  • 12 x 10,000 word novels for readers aged 5-8, client’s name withheld (Bonnier Zaffre).
  • 3 x 12,000 word TV spinoff stories, client’s name withheld (Arkstone).
  • Midnight Library: No Escape, writing as Nick Shadow on behalf of Working Partners: 3 x 10,000 word horror stories (Hodder).
  • Midnight Library: End Game, writing as Nick Shadow on behalf of Working Partners: 3 x 10,000 word horror stories (Hodder).
  • The Vampire Plagues: Mexico, writing as Sebastian Rook on behalf of Working Partners: 49,000 words (Scholastic).
  • The Vampire Plagues: Paris, writing as Sebastian Rook on behalf of Working Partners: 43,000 words (Scholastic).
  • The Vampire Plagues: London, writing as Sebastian Rook on behalf of Working Partners: 58,000 words (Scholastic).

 As Ben Jeapes

  • Ada Lovelace: biography, 20,000 words (First Names series, pub. David Fickling 2019)
  • The Comeback of the King: novel, 80,000 words (KDP)
  • The Teen, the Witch & the Thief: novel, 80,000 words (KDP)
  • Phoenicia’s Worlds: novel, 100,000 words (Solaris)
  • Time’s Chariot: novel, 84,000 words (Random House)
  • The New World Order: novel, 105,000 words (Random House)
  • The Xenocide Mission: novel, 92,000 words (Random House)
  • His Majesty’s Starship: novel, 100,000 words (Scholastic)
  • Jeapes Japes: collection of 18 short stories professionally published between 1990–1999 (KDP).

“Ben Jeapes is a real pleasure to work with. Having worked with him both as a fiction and non-fiction author, I can say that he’s professional, timely and always insightful when it comes to the needs of the text.”
– Jon Oliver, Senior Commissioning Editor, Lion Hudson