Think of all the sf books these days where a dead person’s name on the cover is much larger than that of the actual author. Just goes to show that people do judge a book by its cover all the time.
BTW Victor Appleton predates Dixon and Keene. The first Tom Swifts were written by Howard Garis, the author of the Uncle Wiggly books. As for real people not actually writing, most of the Baby Sitter Club books were farmed out to others by Anne M. Martin, a real person. And daughter of Henry Martin, New Yorker cartoonist.
Andrews doesn’t technically count as a brand. Her name is trademarked, true, but Andrew Neiderman is the only person to write under that name besides the real V.C. Andrews. It’s a pseudonym basically.
Well, the first what? First writer to use a pseudonym or house name? No. First to lend his name as a branding element? No.
First to be a lousy hack of a writer who has no business being published, much less a bestseller, who found a way to make more easy money by renting out his name? Maybe.
Clancy could write reasonably well - at least as well as most pulp writers and better than some. He had a tendency to get off into pages of technoporn and rather absurd story developments, but he wasn’t all that bad a writer overall.
Patterson - jayzuss. How he ever got past a slushpile or a writer’s group is completely beyond me. You can hear the square wheels thumping as you read.
