Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
Sorry. Can you clarify what you mean?
Tom Clancy didn't write the Tom Clancy's Op Center series, or Net Force or any of the novelizations of the Tom Clancy's video games. That is known and acknowledged.
But are you saying that he didn't write, say... the books published under his name from The Cardinal of the Kremlin onwards? If so, I don't buy it. From The Teeth of the Tiger forward, the 'co-author' is listed on the cover. Why would they do that if the books were already being ghost-written?
Same think for James Patterson. Why bother listing the co-author sometimes if all the books are ghost written anyway?
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The story I heard is that his wordsmithing was poor and even on the first book "editing" amounted to a rewrite. The storytelling was excellent but the prose wasn't. A lot of newcomers have similar issues and outgrow them in later books. Clancy didn't. The core was great but the stories still needed extensive rewriting so they started crediting the ghosts.
Over time he did less and less until he could barely be listed as writing the story. But the books sold by the million. Eventually he tired of the game and sold the brand. By then the games were outproducing the books anyway.
Book credits don't always reflect the work that went into them. Sometimes they are true collaborations, sometimes they are edits turned collaboration, and sometimes the big name author only provided the concept, setting, plot, or none of the above. Just lending their name to goose sales.
Again, Patterson is honest about how he runs his book mill.
Not everybody is.