Brighton video blogger Zoella, who last week became the fastest selling debut novelist since records began, employed a ghost-writing team.

Zoe Sugg shot to fame with her YouTube channel which is watched by more than six million subscribers.

Her debut novel, Girl Online, about a teenage blogger and her relationship with an American musician, sold 78,109 copies in its first week.

The total is more than the likes of JK Rowling and Dan Brown.

However, it has emerged the 24-year-old used a team of ghost-writers, including young adult book author Siobhan Curham and Amy Alward, from Penguin publishing, to help her.

Her management team said she had teamed up with a “brilliant” editorial team to “help craft” her first book.