You Must Not Cheat The Reader

I'm sorry, I like to think that I don't get all elitist and pretentious about literature and art and all that, but when this kind of thing happens, it's hard to pretend that asli[l. Argh;. Blah.

I find this disturbing. I'm disturbed to the point of being inarticulate.

Maybe it bothers me because I have this thing about writing being a form of communication between writer and reader. Readers are reading out of a need to connect with someone. When the name on the book doesn't belong to a person who really wrote the book but is merely there as a marketing brand so some other person or organization can reap profit, what kind of communication is really taking place? The reader is being cheated.

Yeah, I know. V.C. Andrews has been dead for years. For decades. Does that set a precedent? Maybe in another quarter century or so, "her" readers will catch on. What happens when her ghost writer dies?