If Rowling’s idea was so bog-standard unoriginal, then why would any publisher bother to include her in any deal to develop an unoriginal idea? This speculation is not only baseless, but it reflects a basic unfamiliarity with the publishing and entertainment industries.
There’s simply no evidence at all that Rowling didn’t write those books, beyond Seamus’s sexist and classist stereotypes about what Rowling might be capable of based on his watching her in interviews.
And knowing something about the publishing industry, if they had hired a ghostwriter, (1) The books would have been written a lot better than they actually were, and (2) They wouldn’t have bothered to use a “front” like Rowling. They would have simply used a house pseudonym.
Publishers simply don’t work that way. Rowling, like any other author, has no direct access to a publishing house. They had to go through agents, who after determining the quality and marketability of a work, then persuade publishers to take it on. In such a circumstance, no publisher is going to take on an author who has nothing but an (unoriginal, according to Seamus) story idea and then spend time and money developing the work for them. If the idea’s that good, they’ll just get a writer they know is capable and pay him or her to do it, without having to fork over millions to someone like Rowling.
(Another thing that Seamus seems to miss is that ideas are not protected by the law, only expression. Plots and background elements can be freely taken and reworked, and they have been, over, and over again.)
Especially these days, having made massive cuts in editing staffs, publishers don’t want to have to spend a ton of money reworking a manuscript. (And, if anything, it’s more than obvious from a casual reading of the first Harry Potter book that while it might have been cut down from the original manuscript, the words printed are the words of a first-time author, not a professional hack.)
