Who Really Wrote that Book?

I like to read popular fiction and have my favorite authors, John Grisham, Stephen King, etc.  There is one author who always seems to have a book on the best seller list.  That is the prolific James Patterson.  I’m not a fan of James Patterson and don’t read his books.  I read some of his earlier-books and they didn’t intrigue me.  Now one thing interesting about Mr. Patterson’s books is that many of his bestselling books seem to always have a co-author.  He rarely seems to write a book alone.  Now my question is how much of the book is written by the main author and how much is written by the co-author.  It seems that the name James Patterson on a book almost guarantees that the book will end up selling thousands of copies.  So I always wondered if a novice author wrote 99% of the book, then James Patterson wrote a few lines and bingo—it is published with Patterson’s name and the co-author and everyone wins big.  Now I don’t know that any of this is true.  But it is something that I have often wondered about.

One of my other favorite authors is Jeffrey Archer who penned Kane and Abel and the series of books known as the Clifton Chronicles.  Archer is an English author and his books usually take place in England and one of his trademarks is that there is usually a strange twist in the story he is telling.  The books are very British, through and through.  But recently, I found one of his older books, called The Eleventh Commandment.  It was all about the CIA and American spies.  I know that Mr. Archer would easily have the knowledge to write such a book, but the book was so “unlike him”.  Although, I enjoyed the book, I just didn’t feel like it was written by British author Jeffrey Archer, whose many other books I have read.  That made me wonder, did Archer really write this book or did someone else write it and it have the Archer name because he was a well known bestselling author.

I don’t know the answer to my inquiring mind questions above, but they have made me wonder.  I’m just saying…

Oh, anyone wanting to ghost write any of my blog entries is welcome to do so.  Just use my name.