One of my favorite authors Robert Jordan, a.k.a. James Rigney, recently passed away. His whole life he had this idea about a book that told the story of the 'last battle' of this fantasy world. So, since the 1980's he's been writing books in this series, the wheel of time, leading up to the final book in the series. A year ago he was diagnossed with a fatal are type of blood disease. He knew he wouldn't have time to finish his last book (number 12), so instead of actually writing the whole book from start to finish, he dictated to his wife (harriet) and editor on many hours of tape and many pages of word processor the plot line of the last book.
My question is more of a literary one. When this book comes out, what will be written as the author? In this type of situation was it written by robert jordan, edited by harriet? Or is it Co-authored by robert and harriet jordan? Or would it be considered that harriet wrote the book entirely by herself, meaning author is harriet, but we all know that it is robert jordan's idea.
Probably Robert and Harriet Jordan. I think most consider the idea and the prose to be part of the job of the writer. So if they both contribute to the story and writing, they'll probably both be credited as writer.
Another option would be Robert Jordan being credited with the idea and Harriet as the writer, but I doubt that since Jordan is known as the writer of the series and they probably wouldn't be inconsistent.
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