Clive Cussler novels....ghost writer

[Rick Potter]

I read a lot of novels, and my favorite adventure writer is Clive Cussler. For the last few years, he has expanded his horizons by branching out with several series of books. Maybe 'ghost writer' is the wrong term, but each series has it's own cast, and is written by Clive Cussler, along with a co-writer.

For example: Clive Cussler WITH Paul Kemprecos, or Clive Cussler AND Justin Scott.

Just wondering, do the terms 'WITH' or 'AND' have any special meaning in the publishing world? Do they possibly denote how much of the book is written by the other person, or that maybe the idea for the book came from another person?

I could use other examples, with other authors, but ol' Clive is the one I read last. I really like his Isaac Bell series, taking place at the turn of the last century.

Rick Potter

[Chuck Saunders]

I have long been a fan of Clive's and think that his "collaborative" works seem to lack his spirit even though they follow his formula. I think that this is just his way of expanding the brand. I do like the Isaac Bell series, seems to play well with his historical interests.
Chuck

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I read Cussler...and Clancey and others. I wonder if they don't do the collaborative thing to add a different perspective, flavor and utilize the other peoples expriences often to get an "insiders" point of view..especially in military or police subjects. Those two topics can be hard to research as limited information will be given for security reasons and a lot of people in those professsions can be appear a little "clannish" to outsiders.

[Jim Rimmer]

Check out this site: http://www.paulkemprecos.com/ Kemprecos himself explains his role and it's a little too long to cut and paste here. Seems to me it is a commercially motivated move to crank out more books under a successful name.

[Larry Frank]

I also like the Isaac Bell series. I think that Clive Cussler was getting older and had a lot of other interests such as NUMA which investigates a lot of ship wrecks. He is a lot like his main character Dirk Pitt who has gotten older in the books and no longer really a main character. I think that his first book is about 1973 so that he has worked a lot of years writing.

Clive Cussler has provide a lot of books that I really enjoyed reading and some of the spin off ones are pretty good.

[Ole Anderson]

My first and favorite, so far, was "The Chase"!

"WITH , AND": I have no idea.

[Walter Plummer]

I read the Dirk Pitt series till he aged Pitt and added the kids but I think he started "ghosting" with no credit around 1990. I felt the whole style and feel changed. I think he was doing an outline of the story at best. It is a shame because his early stuff is great. None of the movies ever did them justice. I always wondered if Cussler's books were inspiration for the movie National Treasure. That had the "feel".

[Jim Becker]

This is a very common thing in the past x years with many popular authors and is a way for them to get more books out in a short period of time for the mass market, generally as series publications with a continuing cast of characters. Many of the writers who assist these "big names" are already established, solid selling writers, themselves. Jim DeFelice is a nice example of that.

Honestly, I personally read many of these "with" and "and" series books from the big names I love and they are generally every bit as enjoyable as many works strictly written by the name author. Cussler is a favorite of mine, too. Dale Brown is another. All good stuff.

[Pat Barry]

Clancy and Cusler both have quit the writing business. The publishers just use their names to sell books. I bet all that Tom and Clive do is consult on the story line. In my view, the co-authored books are terrible. I will not buy them anymore and I probably wouldn't read them if they were free.