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Authorship is a profession in flux. Ranging from the anonymous and attributed, individual and collective, or even mythical writers of ancient and medieval periods, to the idealised author as a figure of creative genius and visionary during the Romantic era, and finally to the current overemphasis on bestselling and celebrity authors, which often overshadows the work of less commercial authors or those with more modest sales in UK and US publishing today, such shifts are often linked to perceptions of visibility and status (Foucault; Chartier; Boyle; Griffin; Jaszi; Fisher; Rose; Woodmansee; Ramdarshan Bold, “The Commodification”). It is evident that authorship is indeed an evolving profession, influenced by changes in technology, publishing practices, reader preferences, and cultural trends.
Considering these changes, this article considers a form of distinctly unromantic authorship within the context of the popular genre of romance: ghostwriting, particularly as it functions within a system of literary production managed by book packagers for commercially lucrative teenage fiction series. By “ghostwriter,” we refer to a writer who produces a text credited to another individual or brand, typically remaining anonymous or uncredited in the final publication. This labour is often guided by editorial and brand constraints, especially in franchised or packaged fiction. Despite the broader changes underway in publishing, the imagery of the solitary writer remains an enduring popular and scholarly view of authorship (Woodmansee; Op den Kamp and Hunter). That same imagery often reinforces a narrow vision of who can be an author, especially along lines of race, social class, and gender. While some authors work alone and are celebrated for their individual genius, ghostwriters demonstrate that writing can also be a collaborative effort, involving multiple contributors behind the scenes. This challenges the romanticised notion of the solitary genius and points to alternative genres and forms of authorship.
The Sweet Valley series serves as a particularly relevant case study in this discussion due to its significant impact on the young adult fiction market and its extensive use of ghostwriters. Created by Francine Pascal and first published in 1983, Sweet Valley High became one of the most popular teen series of its time. The series follows the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield as they navigate high school in the fictional town of Sweet Valley, California. With storylines ranging from romance and drama to suspense and mystery, the series appealed to a wide readership, selling over two hundred million copies worldwide (Lee). Although Francine Pascal is credited as the author, the series was largely written by a team of uncredited ghostwriters under the management of the book packaging company Daniel Weiss Associates. Over the course of the series, numerous ghostwriters contributed to its publication, shaping its voice and narrative style while adhering to Pascal’s creative vision. This model of production allowed for the rapid release of books—often one per month—sustaining reader engagement and capitalising on market trends (Pattee, Commodities in Literature).
Pascal, a journalist and author, initially conceived of Sweet Valley High to create a commercially viable series that would captivate teenage readers. Her background in writing for television and magazines influenced her approach to the series, structuring it as an ongoing, episodic saga that maintained a consistent tone and characterisation despite being authored by multiple writers (Lee). The commercial success of the series led to several spin-offs, including Sweet Valley Twins, which followed Jessica and Elizabeth in middle school; Sweet Valley University, which explored their college years; and Sweet Valley Senior Year, which focused on their final year of high school. More recently, Sweet Valley Confidential revisited the twins as adults, and the Sweet Valley universe expanded into graphic novels in collaboration with Dynamite Entertainment.
The cultural significance of Sweet Valley High extends beyond its literary success. It played a crucial role in shaping the teen fiction genre, paving the way for later series such as The Baby-Sitters Club and Gossip Girl, which also relied on ghostwriting and book packaging. The series reinforced and at times challenged stereotypes of high school life, romance, and girlhood identity, providing a lens through which teenage readers could engage with themes of friendship, ambition, and societal expectations (Roberts).
In the forty years since the Sweet Valley series was first published, an expansive network of ghostwriters, editors, and packagers crafted a unique model of authorship where individual voices were often decentred, countering the enduring narrative of a singular creator in favour of a more complex, if challenging, writing and production process.
In the context of this article, “voice” primarily refers to narratological perspective and characteristic strategies for demonstrating perspective, like tone and style (Prince): qualities often stifled by the rigid constraints of ghostwriting within a tightly controlled franchise framework. Additionally, this paper considers authorial “standpoint,” a word we use to describe the perspectives of ghostwriters themselves, a group of authors whose experiences and contributions remain underexplored in literary and book studies research.
While ghostwriting was once viewed as secretive or stigmatised, attitudes towards ghostwriters have evolved in recent years (Rowe). Many authors, celebrities, and public figures openly acknowledge their use of ghostwriters, emphasising collaboration and teamwork in the creative process (Shaffi). However, ghostwriters remain largely invisible to the public, even though they contribute significantly to a book’s content. As a result, ghostwriters challenge traditional notions of authorship, where the author is typically seen as the sole creator of the work. But at the same time, the ghostwriter’s role similarly raises questions about the importance of personal identity in the creation of art.
As a result, this article focuses on this tension between collaborative and individual voices in ghostwriting. It further considers how the tension is enmeshed in emerging issues of diversity, particularly in the visibility and representation of the characters and of the ghostwriters themselves. Drawing on evidence from extensive interviews with six people involved in publishing the Sweet Valley series, the use of ghostwriting in the series is defined by a form of transitional authorship, an approach to creative and proprietary voice that was both crafted by the vision of Francine Pascal and the labour of uncredited yet compensated writers. However, ghostwriters often faced difficulties with “imitating a kind of platonic Sweet Valley High voice” (Amy Boesky) when it came to their own endeavours, immersed in a “sort of ventriloquism” (Alfred Ryan Nerz) that at times impacted other writing under their own name. Beginning with an overview of our methodology, we then provide a concise overview of the relevant literature and existing scholarship on the historical and contemporary practice of ghostwriting before turning to evidence highlighting the two key points of our findings.
Methodology
To explore the phenomenon of ghostwriting within the context of authorship, our research focuses on a case study of the iconic Sweet Valley series. Through semistructured interviews, conducted by both researchers via Zoom, our aim was to examine the experiences of five ghostwriters who contributed to the series, alongside one publishing professional who played a pivotal role in editing and shaping the stories (see Table 1). This is a relatively small sample size, so we acknowledge that the participants’ perspectives do not reflect a universal Sweet Valley ghostwriting experience. Our methodology was shaped by a twofold approach: firstly, by selecting ghostwriters who were most visible about their ghostwriting experiences within the Sweet Valley series, specifically Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley High, and Sweet Valley University; and secondly, by employing a snowball sampling technique, whereby suggestions for additional participants were sought from the initial interviewees. This dual approach ensured a diverse yet focused sample, comprised of individuals from different (although all white, mostly college-educated, and predominantly women) demographic backgrounds with direct involvement in the creation and publication of the series.
Throughout the interviews, we analysed the personal and professional experiences of each ghostwriter, seeking to understand the complexities of their roles within the collaborative framework of ghostwriting. We explored their journey into the world of Sweet Valley, from their initial engagement with the series to the challenges and benefits they encountered along the way. Through candid conversations, we observed invaluable reflections on how their involvement in ghostwriting shaped their perceptions of authorship and creative expression. In parallel, our discussion with one of the series editors provided invaluable insights into the broader landscape of authorship within the publishing industry. We gained a deeper understanding of the dynamics between ghostwriters and publishing professionals, illuminating the symbiotic relationship that underpins the creation and dissemination of literary works. As our interviews unfolded, patterns began to emerge, revealing the varied nature of ghostwriting and its impact on author development. We learned of the inherent tensions between creative fulfilment and professional anonymity, as well as the complexities of navigating authorial identity within the ghostwriting persona. Moreover, we gained insights into how the Sweet Valley series served as both a launching pad and a double-edged sword for emerging writers, offering unparalleled exposure yet often at the expense of individual recognition.
Ultimately, our methodology facilitated a holistic exploration of the phenomenon of ghostwriting within the context of authorship, demonstrating the interplay between creativity, collaboration, and commercial imperatives. Drawing on two distinct historical and scholarly contexts—the development of copyright and proprietary authorship alongside the publishing evolution of YA romance—we sought to better understand the function of ghostwriting at the intersection of the two practices and our related areas of expertise. By amplifying the voices of ghostwriters and publishing professionals involved in the creation of the Sweet Valley series, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the nuances inherent in contemporary notions of authorship and literary production.
| Participant name | Sweet Valley books written (number) | Time period writing for Sweet Valley or working at the press |
| Elise Howard (editor) | N/A | 1987–1995 |
| Amy Boesky | Unable to remember | 1983–1989 |
| Amanda Gersh | Five | 1997–1999 |
| Louise Hawes | Five | 1987–1992 |
| Alfred Ryan Nerz | Two | 1999–2000 |
| Linda Joy Singleton | One | 1992 |
Table 1. Overview of study participants
Solitary Genius or Collaborative Creation? The Development of Copyright, Authorship, and Ghostwriting
Ghostwriting simultaneously predated, paralleled, and followed the rise of authorship in the late eighteenth century as a proprietary, rights-bearing position (Rose; Bracha). With the advent of formal copyright under the English Statute of Anne of 1710, authorship was codified as a publicly visible category of labour where a writer had an inherent, material right to the reproduction of their expressions. However, as scholars of copyright and authorship well know, the practical holders of those rights were frequently booksellers, and they were limited to English soil rather than extending throughout the British Empire. By the turn of the nineteenth century, however, authors in Britain and the United States slowly began to exert further control over their works (Homestead; McGill). Such tension between publishers and authors, as Catherine L. Fisk notes, resulted in the nineteenth century–long “difficult and complex issue of balancing individual and collective rights,” a tension that foreshadowed several of the benefits and concerns shared by the Sweet Valley ghostwriters nearly two centuries later (2-3).
The historical precedents of contemporary ghostwriters existed both in the centre and periphery of these debates. From one vantage, ghostwriting was the most common mode of writing in the eighteenth-century anglophone world via its origins in anonymous and pseudonymous publishing. Much like the ghostwriting of Sweet Valley, anonymous or pseudonymous eighteenth-century texts were written by more than one person, sharing a singular name like that of either Publius or Francine Pascal (Loughran; Pasley; Slauter). Many of the texts published in this time were done so without a name attached, and if there was a copyright claim involved, it was frequently held by the publishers. Writers, when they in fact made money, more closely followed what is today the common model of work for hire, the legal foundation of ghostwriting by which someone is paid a lump sum, potentially with a royalty component, to produce a work (Fisk; Vaidhyanathan). While codified in the United States in 1976, work-for-hire doctrine has roots that stretch back decades and even centuries to the practice of publishers or other commercial institutions paying an artist, be they a writer, musician, photographer, or other type of creative, for the product of their labour. The owner of the rights was and is the identifiable party rather than the creator (Silbey). This is distinct, then and now, from the status of an author, which was both practically and conceptually conceived of as publicly visible category, in no small part because for a proprietary right to be enforceable, it needed to belong to someone.
Ghostwriting aligns with a number of these periods in authorship development. The focus on the content of the story rather than the individual behind it harks back to early authorship. Ghostwriting has ancient roots, with scribes and assistants often penning works on behalf of prominent figures such as rulers, scholars, and religious leaders. In these early forms, ghostwriters were typically anonymous and played a behind-the-scenes role in producing written works (Stelkovis). More recently, in the twentieth century, the practice of celebrity ghostwriting became more prevalent, with famous people commissioning writers to pen their memoirs, autobiographies, or novels. These ghostwriters often remained anonymous or received limited credit for their contributions, allowing the celebrity to maintain their public image and brand (Yelin). Today, ghostwriting usually happens in the context of commercial publishing, where market demands and celebrity status can drive the creation of books. Celebrities and public figures may hire ghostwriters to bring their ideas to life or to capitalise on their brands without investing the time and effort required to write a book themselves. This highlights the commercial aspect of authorship and publishing, where profitability sometimes takes precedence over artistic transparency.
Love, Ghostwriters, and Serial Stories: The Evolution of YA Romance Fiction
Like many other fields of literature, young adult fiction (YA) is author-driven, with brand-name authors dominating the bestseller charts, especially in popular genres such as YA romance and YA fantasy (Ramdarshan Bold, The Thirteen Percent Problem). This has implications on the types of stories being told and main characters being written (Ramdarshan Bold, Inclusive Young Adult Fiction). However, what it means to be a YA author has varied since the field’s inception. The early days of YA often focused on themes of (heterosexual) courtship, romance, and coming-of-age experiences. In the midtwentieth century—a significant period of growth for YA—prominent authors such as Maureen Daly (Seventeenth Summer) and Rosamond du Jardin (Pam and Penny) published novels that explored themes of teenage romance and identity. These books often depicted the challenges and joys of first love in, ostensibly, a relatable and realistic manner (Cole).
The 1980s and ’90s—the period where the Sweet Valley High series grew in prominence—saw a proliferation in YA romance, with authors like Judy Blume and Francine Pascal becoming household names. Sweet Valley High and other popular YA romance series fiction, such as Sweet Dreams, shaped the landscape of YA romance. Their popularity amongst young readers and consumers demonstrated the market demand for teen-focused romance fiction, which transcended the world of literature (Cart; Pattee, Reading the Adolescent Romance). With over 150 books in the series, Sweet Valley employs serialised storytelling, with ongoing plotlines and character development. This encourages readers to keep coming back for more, eager to see what would happen next in the lives of the Wakefield twins and their friends. It also encourages what Roberts calls a “series-reading journey”: where readers can follow the characters from elementary school in Sweet Valley Kids to college in Sweet Valley University (Roberts, 124; Fong; Litton). Series such as Sweet Valley High helped to popularise teen fiction: Their commercial success and cultural impact demonstrated the viability and profitability of the young adult market, leading to a significant expansion of the field and paving the way for future YA literature. However, these series and their predecessors predominantly centred around white, middle-class characters and settings, mirroring the dominant cultural and social norms of their time. As Cart notes, they portrayed a “world of white faces and white picket fences surrounding small-town, middle-class lives where the worst thing that could happen would be a misunderstanding that threatened to leave someone dateless for the junior prom” (21).
This period and into the 2000s also saw the growth in other prominent ghostwritten series for teen readers, such as The Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin, Goosebumps by R. L. Stine, and Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar. It also saw the growth of packager-generated, cross-platform, creative properties such as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. The practice of ghostwriting in teen series fiction gained prominence in the early twentieth century with the establishment of the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Edward Stratemeyer in 1906. Stratemeyer revolutionised children’s and YA literature by creating a factorylike system where he would outline stories and hire ghostwriters to flesh them out. This allowed for the rapid production of books that adhered to a consistent style and quality. The Stratemeyer Syndicate produced notable series such as Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene and The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon, whose successes demonstrated the viability of series fiction for the youth market and established a template for future series (Nilsen and Donelson; Pattee, Commodities in Literature). As the popularity of series fiction grew, other publishers adopted the ghostwriting model to meet the demand for consistent, engaging content: We will explore this further in our discussion section.
Like Sweet Valley High, most YA romance and ghostwritten teen series fiction, particularly those from the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, often reflected the cultural norms and limitations of their times. Unlike Sweet Valley High, however, other popular romance series, such as its predecessor Sweet Dreams, did not rely on ghostwriters or a named author. Instead, they were written by individual, mostly North American women, who received attribution, with their names appearing on the covers. Yet, like Sweet Valley High, books like Sweet Dreams also adhered to formulas, meaning that while their authors were credited, they were also heavily constrained by market demands and editorial frameworks. It is important to distinguish between ghostwritten series like Sweet Valley High, which operated under a different model of authorship, and these formulaic yet individually authored teen romance books. However, like YA more broadly, many of the early series—ghostwritten or otherwise—predominantly featured white, middle-class protagonists and did not include a wide range of perspectives or characters from socially marginalised backgrounds (Cart). In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on diversity and representation in YA romance, and the broader field of YA (Jenkins and Cart; Ramdarshan Bold, YA Anthologies: Amplifying Voices, Building Community; Cart; Parks). Authors such as Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Nicola Yoon, Alice Oseman, and Jenny Han have introduced readers to characters from socially marginalised groups and love stories that reflect the experiences of a broader range of young people. LGBTQIA+ romances, mixed-heritage relationships, and protagonists from various cultural backgrounds have become more common, enriching the genre and offering readers a more inclusive representation of love, relationships, and the teenage experience (Ramdarshan Bold, YA Anthologies: Amplifying Voices, Building Community). This shift towards inclusivity in YA romance highlights the evolving priorities of the genre, contrasting sharply with the rigid frameworks and limited perspectives of earlier ghostwritten works.
Romantic content has also shifted from the “dateless for the junior prom” storylines and idealised, escapist fantasies to more realistic depictions of teenage life and relationships. Series such as Sweet Valley High followed similar formulaic plots as romance novels for adults, and the main characters drew upon stereotypical, and gendered, tropes (Roberts). Scholars have explored the development of emotional and physical intimacy in YA romance, often critiquing these gendered tropes alongside the intersection of romance and feminism (Radway; Christian-Smith; Day; Trites; Kokkola; Seifert). YA romance has also seen the rise of various subgenres and trends over the last two decades. Examples include paranormal romance like the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, the Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater, and the Caster Chronicles series by Kami Garcia; dystopian romance, such as the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer, and the Legend series by Marie Lu; and contemporary rom-coms, from series like the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series by Jenny Han and Once Upon a Con by Ashley Poston, to stand-alone novels by bestselling romance authors such as Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert, all of which reflect the diverse range of YA romance stories available to readers today.
Findings: Creativity, Compensation, and Collaboration in Two Interwoven Areas
The central interlocutor of authorship, YA literature, and Sweet Valley ghostwriting is the concept of voice, both in its narratological form and in terms of authorial standpoint. In each conversation with ghostwriters and editors involved in Sweet Valley, voice and the form of expression their writing took were the foundation to their experiences. As Amy Boesky explained, “I think people are surprised by how intuitive [ghostwriting] was and how much I enjoyed it and how much it came to feel like a kind of true collaboration, in the sense that I really felt like I knew some of these characters and had internalised them, even though they were not my own invention.” For some ghostwriters, this was an incredibly useful framework, allowing them to immerse themselves in the series, replicating a specific “pastel” world, albeit with occasional marks of their own, and with reasonable compensation (Amy Boesky). For others, like Amanda Gersh, it was a “dubious skill,” one that impeded their ability to write in ways outside of the tone set by Pascal for Sweet Valley.
In our interviews, several themes related to voice—including issues of genre and tone—emerged. Additionally, themes that reflected the author’s historical and current standpoint on their own work—including literary value, attribution, and craft—were present in the words of the participants. Given both the focus of the special issue and the length of the article, we will focus on two central and interrelated themes that stood out as essential to our understandings of the genre and practice of YA romance: transitional authorship and emerging issues with diversity. What we learned over the course of the process was that the type of authorship created by those involved in Sweet Valley was in fact far more complex and contradictory than we had initially anticipated, and those complexities reverberated in the predominantly white, resourced, heteronormative and nondisabled world of Sweet Valley. When we began our research, our understanding of ghostwriting was that it was collective in nature, the product of multiple voices and perspectives working in partnership to produce a given book. And while Sweet Valley ghostwriting was indeed collaborative for most of the contributors, as Amy Boesky notes, “There is more invention and innovation and originality in ghostwriting than people imagine.” What we observed was a unique form of authorship that, if not collective, was transitional between different understandings of personality, style, and property.
Part I—Transitional Authorship: Collaboration and Anonymity in Sweet Valley’s Syndicate Model
Transitional authorship refers to a stage of authorship characterised by collaborative and often anonymous contributions to literary works, typically within franchise series aimed at young readers or teens, such as the Sweet Valley series. This form of authorship is distinct from traditional notions of the “singular genius” author and differs from fully collective authorship, where credit is evenly distributed among contributors. Instead, transitional authorship operates within a networked framework (i.e., the syndicate model), where creative and editorial inputs flow between multiple participants, each playing a vital yet often uncredited role in the creative process.
This model is common in work-for-hire arrangements, where emerging writers, often at the start of their careers, work under tight constraints to develop their skills in writing to a brief, meeting deadlines, and adapting to editorial direction. These writers are guided by experienced editors and often function within a system that includes packagers, publishers, and a name author, like Francine Pascal, whose brand anchors the series. As Alfred Ryan Nerz, who goes by Ryan, describes, “There’s a lot of hands in the cookie jar. There’s the writer. There’s the editor. Then you go from a packager to the publisher. Then you get up to Francine Pascal.”
This structure complicates questions of authorship and intellectual property. While the name author may be seen as the creative genius behind the series, the reality is that the final product is shaped by the cumulative labour of numerous contributors. Creativity and compensation move back and forth between these participants, reflecting a more fluid and fragmented approach to authorship. As Fisk notes in her work on the work-for-hire doctrine, transitional authorship challenges traditional notions of ownership and originality, situating creative labour within a broader, industrialised context. By balancing collaboration with anonymity, transitional authorship becomes a formative training ground for writers, equipping them with the skills to navigate the professional demands of the publishing industry while fostering the development of their own craft.
Transitional authorship begins with Francine Pascal, who formulated the ideas, tone, and structure of Sweet Valley. All ghostwriters and the editor spoke of a Sweet Valley bible, a massive reference document produced by Pascal, which was her world-building guide for the team. Originating out of an interest in television soap opera in the late 1970s, Pascal drew upon the inspiration of shows like Dallas and Dynasty and initially considered Sweet Valley a television show for teenagers. Working closely with the agency Writers House and her agent, Amy Berkower, Pascal then enlisted of the help of the second node of the transitional authorship network: packagers.
Packaging is a fascinating aspect of the publishing industry and one that warrants much further study (Pattee, Commodities in Literature). Drawing on the Stratemeyer Syndicate framework of series like Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, Sweet Valley was packaged at Cloverdale Press by Daniel Weiss and his editorial team, including Eve Becker, Elise Howard, and Ben Baglio. While Becker left Cloverdale the following year, Elise Howard informed us that she continued to write Sweet Valley books thereafter. In 1987, Baglio moved overseas, while Howard and Weiss formed Daniel Weiss and Associates. Howard subsequently took on an official role with the series, and Sweet Valley was produced under the DWAI banner for over a decade (see Table 2). As Boesky describes, “Packaging houses were essentially acting almost like authors where they would put together an idea, and then they would market it.” Packagers frequently created an idea and then would enlist a team of ghostwriters and editors to produce the books, which would then be sold; the packaging team would create an idea and a proposal, including a synopsis, outlines, and sample chapters, which would then be sold, often with substantial payments, to various publishers. After the sale was secured, ranging anywhere from four to eight titles on average, packagers then commissioned full manuscripts from ghostwriters. The goal of these series was to move beyond books and have tie-ins to television, film, and other media.
Packagers had a large-scale role in the transitional authorship of Sweet Valley. As Howard describes, the job of the packager is to “identify marketable book ideas and then package them for sale to a publisher.” The extent of their involvement varies—some “delivered manuscripts” while others “manufactured the books and sold physical volumes to the publishers.” Before those steps, however, packagers employed in-house editors, working directly with ghostwriters before the manuscript was sent over to the publisher and their own editorial team. For Howard, her experience began as “an editor at Cloverdale Press from 1984 to 1987, before working as editor in chief of Daniel Weiss Associates (hereafter DWAI) from 1987 to 1995.” They did not edit specific Sweet Valley books, but at DWAI, they “managed the editors who worked on the books, helped developed the series’ direction and spin-off series, and as a freelancer wrote story outlines, which were then approved by Francine Pascal.”
Editors who worked at packaging houses often went on to write or originate their own series: For example, Ann Brashares worked at Daniel Weiss and Associates/Seventeenth Street Productions and went on to write the successful Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. It was Brashares who recruited both Linda Joy Singleton and Nerz to the Sweet Valley franchise. Nerz observed how transitional authorship was very “editorially driven by the staff at Seventeenth Street Productions” who “shepherded the series.” Singleton describes the ghostwriting and editor process as being especially useful for her growth as a writer, explaining that she “learned a lot of craft that I would have learned if I’d been able to go to college. So, editors were my college.” Rather than Pascal, she continued, it was “the [packaging] editor we worked closely with.”
How collaborative transitional authorship is depends on the specific experience of a ghostwriter and how one defines collaboration. While the public voice of Sweet Valley was inherently standardised in pursuit of universal personality, the actual process of creation incorporated multiple actors. Some found the process to be deeply interactive, while others described it as siloed, and this experience often depended on when the ghostwriters were working on Sweet Valley: Those who contributed to Sweet Valley in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was packaged by DWAI and the early days of Seventeenth Street Productions, frequently had a different experience than those who worked in later years and under Alloy Entertainment. On the one hand, there was an extensive amount of co-authorship between ghostwriters and packaging editors, while on the other, there was minimal contact after the first few years of the mid-1980s between different ghostwriters.
Since packagers were essentially a hybrid role within transitional authorship, they were jointly responsible both for ensuring the “predetermined style and voice” that defined Sweet Valley and for supporting ghostwriters in the ways that were available to them. Howard describes how her experience with the series interwove both imperatives, remarking that it was “such a rigorous education in editing. And not jerking writers around, being utterly thorough with them.” She continues, “We were the keepers of the intellectual property” and “we needed to know what story those writers were writing.” Part of this had much to do with genre and hierarchy within literary and publishing circles. While there have been shifts in recent years, there was stigma attached to packaging from those who saw a difference between literary work and commercial fiction, particularly when it involved series designed for teenagers. “All books are printed on paper and made up of words,” Howard shares, “but within that realm you have everything from Thomas Pynchon to erotica. And that illustrates part of the problem: What some people value, other people disdain.” Howard shared with us that almost immediately after Sweet Valley was first published, it made it to the New York Times bestseller list. The New York Times subsequently banned juvenile books until the overwhelming success of Harry Potter prompted the paper to form a YA-specific list. Sweet Valley and the way the series was written, Howard observes, did not “suit” a “preconceived narrative” of what authorship should be.
Ghostwriters and Genre: Balancing Craft, Identity, and Professional Growth
The issue of genre and perception was one that ghostwriters, the fourth and foundational figure in transitional authorship, grappled with as well. On the one hand, Gersh describes, working on Sweet Valley “did help me a lot with professionalism, knowing that I could do it, no matter what was between the covers, that I could write a book that would get published was pretty cool.” On the other hand, Louise Hawes shares that she “never used the term ghostwriting,” considering her contributions as “freelance writing,” but “not something I wanted any credit for.” The “pimple- and problem-free crew” of Sweet Valley was, for Hawes, a useful lesson in what to avoid in her own writing, a lesson she passed on to her students later when she taught in a graduate writing program. But “the nuance-free language and the lack of character diversity” was not something she returned to once she left the series. For Gersh, the challenge lay in mixing styles, taking “all my genre writing skills and trying to marry them with my literary side.” As a result, “it was hard to bleed out some of that voice from what happened in my own brain” when she would go to write her own fiction. Yet as Gersh points out, “What I really learned was never to disrespect or underestimate the sincerity with which romance and more genre writing people take their work.”
Each ghostwriter we spoke with had their own unique entry to the work, and yet there are similarities. For Singleton, the process was a balance between her own expression and the craft required to provide readers with what Howard describes as a “comfortable re-entry into that world” of the Sweet Valley series. Singleton came to Sweet Valley with an extensive knowledge of YA series, especially Nancy Drew. “I wanted to be a ghostwriter,” she explains. “At that time, I was definitely involved in the series world.” She continues, “I really wanted to be part of the Nancy Drew history, because even though Nancy Drew is not the character I love the most, once I started hanging out with all the really hardcore Nancy Drew fans, you know, it kind of rubbed off a bit, and it was like, it’d be really cool to be part of this fandom.” For Boesky, a graduate student in English at the time, while “all kinds of writing are hard work,” there was “at that time in my life a unique ease to it for me […] that brought me a great deal of joy.”
“This was the complete opposite world to the world I had immersed myself in as a doctoral student,” Boesky continues. “It took me almost ten years to write my book on Renaissance utopias, and I believe it sold 383 copies, all to libraries, and I do not devalue the labour of love that goes into academic writing. But I also felt there was something about the almost automatic pleasure of writing for readers who loved these books.” For Nerz, working as an editorial assistant as he contributed to Sweet Valley, it was the opportunity to “get outside of my point of view.”
“A lot of men, you know, tend to be stuck in their own egos, their own perspectives and don’t tend to think from the perspective of a woman or a young woman, and I enjoyed that element,” he shares. “I’ve tried to stick with that and realize that a decent amount of writing and editing and storytelling is about listening.”
Compensation, Royalties, and Collaborative Creativity
Explaining the day-to-day of transitional authorship, Singleton explains how she and her peers auditioned with a writing sample. “I was a newbie here,” she says, and “I was excited to show how creative I was. I chose to do one of my own, which they did not want.” After studying the books more, Singleton then sent in another sample, after which she received a letter containing a ten-page outline from Francine Pascal. She then produced a full manuscript based on that outline, going back and forth with her packaging editor until the book was ready to go. Gersh, a recent MFA graduate who had moved to the United States from South Africa when she began working with Sweet Valley, had a similar observation. “I realized I was good at absorbing the tone and the content,” she explains. “Switching out the self and just delivering. And then after that I got hired.”
Central to transitional authorship and the appeal for every ghostwriter was compensation. As Boesky shares, “Compared to just what most writers go through most of the time—most writing is not compensated.” From the perspective of an editor, Howard had a similar observation, which is that writers “were leading dual lives, even literarily. They might have literary ambitions but weren’t making money. This was a paycheck […] Literary editors would say, ‘don’t do it’; [writing series] ‘it will ruin you.’ And I would stand up and say, ‘you could make a living doing this.’” However, this could be an addictive experience, as Gersh notes:
I never needed to be seen; I always wanted to be treated right. It also felt like a trap […] you get good at something like this and it’s hard to find work in NYC as a young writer, so I kept swearing I’d stop and then I’d go back in for one more book. Honestly, it felt like a relationship with a drug dealer at times.
The financial compensation made it worth it for some ghostwriters, as we can see from Hawes’s experience. “The primary attraction of my Sweet Valley assignments?” she shared. “Unlike other series, this one paid royalty. I have never written without them, and it was important to me and my family that if the books were a hit, I could share in that success. They were. And I did! Sweet Valley helped put my kids through college.”
What makes transitional authorship so fascinating and complex from a proprietary perspective is that while the ideas for Sweet Valley books originate with Francine Pascal and the packaging company, the expressions are that of the ghostwriters. While distinct from the forms of intellectual property—mainly copyright—that remained with Pascal and the packaging company, royalties are yet another marker of the transitional authorship. In copyright specifically, it is the expression of an idea, not the idea itself, that is proprietary. Yet amidst the “ironclad grant of rights” described by Howard that defines authorship, a bundle that dates back centuries, copyright remained with Pascal and the packaging entities. We are not privy to the knowledge of whether they remain with Pascal or if she sold them, but this practice was designed, in no small part, as Howard explains, to preserve the series should a writer decide to leave. However, “in acknowledgement of their contributions,” Howard explains, “we always paid royalties to our writers. And for the most part, wherever we could we also included them in the subsidiary rights splits, to make sure that they weren’t just delivering a manuscript and then moving to the next manuscript—and because it was a fair thing to do.” This was not always for case for Sweet Valley ghostwriters: Gersh, who wrote for the series in the late 1990s, was offered a lump-sum payment only. As noted earlier, this led to her having a thorny relationship with the packager. She asserts, “They loved to nickel-and-dime those contracts to make it seem like if you took less of a lump sum, you’d get more on the back end. They were exploitative.”
Essentially, the principle of royalties renders ghostwriting collaborative from a proprietary, if not creative perspective. While ghostwriters do not have the visibility of the authorial brand, in this case Francine Pascal, they do have a share in products of transitional authorship. Apart from Gersh, who did not receive royalties, the other four contributors emphasized their significance to both their transitional authorship in Sweet Valley and in their other works. The scale and scope of royalties varied amongst the writers and their positionality, with some reporting substantial compensation and others sharing that the numbers were more modest. The pattern we observed was that, much like contact with Francine Pascal herself, the chronologically further along in the Sweet Valley series a ghostwriter was, the less expansive the royalties package. The compensation was surely relative: The immediate paychecks, according to Singleton, “looked so gigantic because it was at the time; I was paid three times as much as I received from my work with another packager.” As a self-taught writer, Singleton shared that she “felt generously compensated for a few months of work.” In comparison, Gersh outlined the tangible difficulty of not receiving royalties: “I could barely pay my rent.” While other ghostwriters coming out of university settings did not have as a strong a financial response, most indicated that the payments were fair. And yet, as Howard remarks, “People always assumed that we [series packagers] were bottom-feeders. And they would just nakedly tell us so. And they assumed that we exploited writers, and so they tended to look for evidence that supported that version of the story. And people would be kind of knocked sideways when they found out we did pay royalties.”
Property, like authorship, is more frequently understood in individual rather than collective terms. Howard explains that “we at DWAI always clung to the principle that you get better work out of people who are invested in the property.” Like so many features of transitional—or in between—authorship, royalties marked a middle ground between the singular copyright holder and the absence of legal rights typically afforded to writers for their labour. This brings us back to the question of authorial voice and visibility. As Howard notes, there was a “feeling that there needed to be one single, authorial personality […] Part of it has to do with not disillusioning readers by giving them too much of a peek at how the books are produced. Some of it has to do with the ghostwriters pursuing other lives, so that some of the writers weren’t particularly keen to identify themselves.” These comments reflect the publishing industry’s tendency to prioritise a unified narratological voice over individual expression, thereby reinforcing the invisibility of the ghostwriter’s own authorial standpoint. Howard further shared how Francine Pascal’s name, while representing a real and involved person in the authorship process, also functioned as a pseudonym. Using Francine Pascal as a brand “simplified the story, and no one was particularly concerned with the mechanics of it, following in the steps of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Carolyn Keene.”
Traces, Challenges, and Authorial Identity
Ghostwriters left traces of themselves, a small highlight of their own authorial authority, in things like false dedications to themselves, characters named after friends and family, or, as Boesky shares, “subplots [that] were the only place I could introduce [my own ideas].” Howard said that this practice “was something Cloverdale/ DWAI did as a form of credit” and “not something introduced by the writers.” But they added, “Of course, it only happened if the writers wanted it.” Singleton shared that “one of the things that was kind of fun is that since they would not let me have my name on the book, I wanted to be able to point it out and say, ‘I wrote this book.’ So, I wove in references that applied to me.” Yet some writers preferred the anonymity that Howard described. It provided a barrier between transitional authorship and their other work and drew on a different aspect of their craft. Essentially, they were able to, at least for a period of time, preserve the boundary of their unique voice from that of Sweet Valley.
For other ghostwriters, the experience was more challenging. There were two central issues that some ghostwriters grappled with related to their writerly assumption of the series’ voice and the lack of public attribution of their labour. The first involved a lack of recognition for their work as authors. Singleton describes how after her Sweet Valley Twins book and several Sweet Dream romances were published, she “started to do a lot of events, school and book fairs, all kinds of different events. As I was getting ready to do a book signing, I was told I can’t sign my Sweet Valley book. And I was like, okay, that’s it. This really is not my book. It took thirty years before I did any more ghostwriting. I’m just going to say I want my name on my books.” This contrasted with a slight increase in ghostwriter visibility in other packaged YA series like The Baby-Sitters Club. While Ann M. Martin, who also worked in packaging, wrote many of the early books, the series was largely ghostwritten. “Ann Martin set the precedent,” Singleton said, “at least in my opinion of what I saw, that authors started to let you know the actual author, by hav[ing] their name on the dedication page.” Although many ghostwriters do not want that visibility, as she observes, “for those that do this on a larger scale, that’s just part of the job. It’s just like going into the office.” But for others, she adds, “it’s a little hard to see your book out there and your name not on it.”
Second, some ghostwriters struggled to maintain their own authorial voice after assuming the voice of the series. Gersh explained how, from her perspective,
There’s the mental real estate in your brain. Or rather, the mental word bank. And sometimes it felt like the I only could produce X number of words and it’s so taxing. And that—then you’re just dead at the end of the day. The bank, you know … all the money is out of the bank. All the words have gone. And so, what I would do is I would recover and then try to write fiction, but I really didn’t write much fiction when I was a ghostwriter.
The challenges of this intellectual work are physical as well. While writing for Sweet Valley, Gersh developed severe tendinitis, and it prevented her from completing the book she was working on at the time. Her experience with compensation, particularly considering that injury, was markedly different than the other ghostwriters’, describing it as part of a “ghostwriting mill.” She surmised, “I think for a lot of people writing for young adults was their primary goal. And those for whom that was their primary goal early on, I think probably flourished. If they did, they flourish through that system. They became editors and empowered themselves in some way. But I wasn’t one of them.”
Part II—Diversity and Cultural Shifts in Sweet Valley
As noted earlier, publishing and the profession of authorship have been predominantly white and middle-class due to various systemic and societal factors. All our interviewees were white, and most of them were Ivy League college–educated. All of them had existing networks, or connections, to the book world, which facilitated their entry into writing. This, of course, had implications on the diversity of the characters they wrote, something most of the interviewees were aware of. In the Sweet Valley High books, Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are commonly referred to as “All-American” (read: white, blonde, and thin: They are often described as being a “perfect size six,” for starters), and there were very few BIPOC characters throughout the series. When BIPOC characters were introduced, the racism and microaggressions they faced were often unchallenged, handled uncritically, and written about in a heavy-handed manner.[1] Gersh describes the series as “the most bizarre American generica universe that bears no resemblance to anything in the real world,” while Nerz referred to the Wakefield twins and their friends as “old-school, outdated milquetoast characters.” However, the ghostwriters were constrained by the strict guidelines they had to write to, as Hawes notes,
Was everyone who wrote for the Sweet Valley series aware that it was not set in a realistic context? That Sweet Valley, at least initially, had few inhabitants from diverse backgrounds? That there were next to no problems worse than what to wear for the next party? Sure. But we had our instructions, which governed not only the setting, but also the emotional depth and language of what we wrote.
This lack of emotional connection helped the ghostwriters dissociate from the text and characters, as Gersh observes: “For me it was very clearly a completely different animal from anything I would ever write for myself and put my name on.” Boesky conjectures, “I think the narratives work to uphold the status quo—that was their point.” However, she concluded,
I loved writing them, though they have a lot of issues in terms of their ideology. And I knew it even then. I mean, I was a Jewish outsider in a suburban high school in Detroit that was filled with Jessicas and Elizabeths, and I was much more on the outside than on the inside. But I’m also white. And came from a suburban environment where I could relate to all the middle-classness […] I describe as a homogenizing machine where people had differences and they … kind of went through the narrative and they kind of came out the same. No matter what, whatever difference you came in with, everybody was white.
Ghostwriters who wrote on the later series, such as Sweet Valley University and Sweet Valley Confidential, began to see some shifts in the characters from, as Nerz described, “the original Sweet Valley Highs—everyone’s white, very sort of 90210. Kind of this pure American vision,” to a tentatively more multicultural and intersectional mix of characters. This was, in part, a commercial decision, in addition to the cultural conversations at the time, as Nerz explained:
I felt as if a lot of that was coming from them [the editors], saying, “We have to update this and make it feel more authentic to the current reality of America and its diversity. We can’t do these, you know, Beverly Hills 90210 old-school Sweet Valley High things forever! It’s just like literally missing out on a huge segment of American society.” And then that would get filtered up to the publisher. I think they knew it was sort of not revolutionary, but that they were, like, ahead of the trend, and that they couldn’t continue to make this lily-white world and have it be accepted. And, frankly, there is probably a pragmatic element of, like, they wanted to open up their readership more and make Black and Brown people feel included and want to buy these books.
Unlike the ghostwriters who wrote on the earlier series, Nerz and his peers had more autonomy with what they could write: “I would add my own stuff to it, just like I would write into the outline.” He remembers,
writing a party scene, and in the party, I just stole from my friends in Brooklyn, you know. It was like, I had a buddy who was Puerto Rican. I had a buddy who was half Black, half Jewish. I had, you know, these different friends who are pretty diverse, and I just sort of created composite characters and put them in that party scene and sort of added my own diversity into some of the scenes.
This was supported because, as Nerz notes, the “really simple fact of the editor of the series would just be like, ‘I can’t continue to write Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, and the same milquetoast white girl entitled problems forever.’” This was very different from Howard’s experience on editing the earlier series and being in predominantly white circles. In a quote that poignantly encapsulates the introspective recognition of past failures in diversity and the necessity for a more inclusive approach within the publishing industry, Howard shares,
I mean, it’s embarrassing to talk about, because there was a Black character named Patty, and in our ignorance, not wilful, but ignorance nonetheless, we were like…but how do we show that she’s Black? So, the idea that there would be— I mean, we were all almost entirely white—there were there were some Asian women in the mix, so also normal for publishing—but no Black people in that environment, right? We were just sitting there twiddling our thumbs thinking, okay, beyond saying she’s Black, what does this mean, and not piercing the homogeneity of, you know, our own lower- to upper-middle-class lives and not having enough of our own life experience to even know that we needed to go to people who had lived experience, to help flesh out that story. So, we were a little aware of it and also just kind of dopey about how to change it.
The Sweet Valley series stands as a landmark in young adult literature, not only for its popularity but also for the insights it offers into the mechanics of series publishing. The interplay between ghostwriters, editors, and packaging firms shaped a world that was both formulaic and resonant for its readers, creating a tentative balance between commercial imperatives and creative expression. This interplay also reveals the structural challenges and opportunities within a networked model of authorship, which framed how voice, diversity, and ownership were navigated. It is within this framework that the conclusion further examines the implications of ghostwriting, transitional authorship, and representation in the evolving landscape of young adult literature.
Conclusion
The exploration of ghostwriting in the Sweet Valley series reveals an interesting and nuanced perspective on authorship, voice, and diversity in young adult literature. Through our interviews with ghostwriters and an editor, it becomes clear that the notion of voice is central to understanding their experiences. The process of ghostwriting for the Sweet Valley series was both collaborative and constrained, offering ghostwriters a unique framework that allowed for immersion in the series while also presenting challenges in maintaining their distinct authorial voices. Narratological voice, as articulated by interviewees like Boesky, emerged as a key element in the ghostwriting process, shaping the narratives and ensuring consistency within the Sweet Valley world. However, this standardisation of voice also meant that the series often perpetuated a predominantly white, middle-class, and heteronormative perspective. While ghostwriters occasionally left subtle traces of their individuality within the texts, the overarching narrative remained largely homogeneous, reflecting broader systemic issues in the publishing industry. The evolution of Sweet Valley over time shows a tentative shift towards greater inclusivity and diversity, driven partly by changing cultural conversations and market considerations. Later series introduced more diverse characters and experiences, highlighting the tension between maintaining a familiar brand and adapting to a more inclusive reality. This shift underscores the importance of representation and the need for more authentic and varied voices in both romance fiction and YA.
Transitional authorship, a term we use to describe the networked nature of contributions in Sweet Valley, encapsulates this complexity. It diverges from the traditional singular author model, involving multiple actors—Francine Pascal, book packaging firms, editors, and ghostwriters—each contributing to the final product. This networked authorship created a dynamic where the creative input and intellectual property were shared to varying degrees, complicating traditional notions of ownership and compensation. Compensation played a crucial role in the experiences of ghostwriters, offering financial stability and professional validation. The practice of paying royalties, though not universal, marked a significant recognition of their contributions, blurring the lines between work for hire and collaborative authorship. Yet, for some, the lack of recognition and visibility posed challenges to their sense of ownership and creative fulfilment.
The myth of the singular author, as noted by Nerz, plays a significant role in readers’ engagement with literature. He observes,
I do think that there is something to the myth of the author being a particular person that you have in your head. You know, whoever you’re, you know— whether it’s your Zadie Smith, or some person that you’re like, “Oh, I’ve seen photos. I know who that person is. I have a sense of what they are,” and it adds to your enjoyment of the book. […] Now, in our hyperaware, everyone exposes everything they do universe, I don’t think it would matter as much to expose that. It’s not just one author.
This shift towards transparency can potentially reshape the landscape of authorship, making the collaborative nature of series like Sweet Valley more accepted and appreciated. However, the study’s small sample size, especially the limited editorial perspective, highlights its own constraints. There is ample scope for a larger study to engage with more ghostwriters, publishing professionals, and book packagers to build on these findings and deepen our understanding of transitional authorship.
Ultimately, the Sweet Valley series serves as a fascinating case study in the complexities of ghostwriting, transitional authorship, and the evolving landscape of young adult literature. It highlights the delicate balance between maintaining a consistent, marketable voice and embracing the diverse experiences and perspectives that enrich the field of literature. As the industry and academic field continue to evolve, the lessons from Sweet Valley emphasise the importance of inclusivity, fair compensation, and recognition of the many-sided contributions that shape popular literary worlds.
[1] For example, Cheryl Thomas (Stepsisters and Are We in Love?) and Andy Jenkins (Friend Against Friend)—two Black characters in the Sweet Valley High series—are used as plot devices to address themes of anti-Black racism, racialised violence, and white guilt.
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