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Wilbur Smith in search of an alter ego

30 September 2013

The news that bestselling author Wilbur Smith is, as he puts it, in search of a new Wilbur Smith, a younger writer who will take over the job of writing his books, has been in the papers. At 80, he is ready to go into semi-retirement so that he can spend more time with his much-younger wife, while someone else carries on writing.

When he signed a £15 million deal with HarperCollins recently there was speculation that he would get some younger writers to help write the books, as both Clive Cussler and James Patterson have done. Both keep some control of the storylines of their books, and can thus claim authorship.

Only dead authors have had their books completely written for them by others. Robert Ludlum has been particularly successful in his second incarnation, because a good writer was involved, and V C Andrews produced a whole series of books from beyond the grave.
One can assume that Smith's writer will be someone with a decent track-record and some real chance of engaging the audience for his books. The author says: ‘I imagine we would have a conversation first to see how we get on. Then I would say to him or her, "Listen, why don't you rough out a storyline? Read my books, and there's a couple of things we can pick up and carry forward, and once you ‘ve given me a storyline we can get together and try to stimulate each other's imagination."

But isn't this just really getting another person to write your books? And does it matter? Well, in the interests of carrying on the brand, which is of concern to the author, the publisher and his agent, it's very much in their interest to see that this extremely successful author's audience are kept happy with a series of new bestsellers, books which will also keep the backlist live.

So, does it matter for the readers? I think it does. Even though they may be quite happy to carry on reading a favourite author, isn't there something a bit deceitful about it? Or is the ongoing power of the brand the most important thing?
When you're reading a book, don't you want to think that the author with his or her name on the cover is the one who wrote it? Or doesn't it matter really, as long as you enjoy the book?

The news that bestselling author Wilbur Smith is, as he puts it, in search of a new Wilbur Smith, a younger writer who will take over the job of writing his books, has been in the papers. At 80, he is ready to go into semi-retirement so that he can spend more time with his much-younger wife, while someone else carries on writing.

When he signed a £15 million deal with HarperCollins recently there was speculation that he would get some younger writers to help write the books, as both Clive Cussler and James Patterson have done. Both keep some control of the storylines of their books, and can thus claim authorship.

Only dead authors have had their books completely written for them by others. Robert Ludlum has been particularly successful in his second incarnation, because a good writer was involved, and V C Andrews produced a whole series of books from beyond the grave.
One can assume that Smith's writer will be someone with a decent track-record and some real chance of engaging the audience for his books. The author says: ‘I imagine we would have a conversation first to see how we get on. Then I would say to him or her, "Listen, why don't you rough out a storyline? Read my books, and there's a couple of things we can pick up and carry forward, and once you ‘ve given me a storyline we can get together and try to stimulate each other's imagination."

But isn't this just really getting another person to write your books? And does it matter? Well, in the interests of carrying on the brand, which is of concern to the author, the publisher and his agent, it's very much in their interest to see that this extremely successful author's audience are kept happy with a series of new bestsellers, books which will also keep the backlist live.

So, does it matter for the readers? I think it does. Even though they may be quite happy to carry on reading a favourite author, isn't there something a bit deceitful about it? Or is the ongoing power of the brand the most important thing?

When you're reading a book, don't you want to think that the author with his or her name on the cover is the one who wrote it? Or doesn't it matter really, as long as you enjoy the book?

Comments

Seems a bit similar to

Seems a bit similar to biographies, auto-biographies and ghost written biographies.

Perhaps we need a new classification so you can tell if you're get a semi-authored book rather than fully authored. Hasn't James Patterson been doing this for years?