RJ's International Thriller he Ghostwrote

[Orderofolde]

I came upon some information today that I hadn't seen before on Wikipedia which revealed that RJ had written an "International Thriller" that was still believed to have been written by another author.  I did some research and saw that it stemmed from something he said at an interview at the 2005 Dragon Con.  I did some checking and couldn't find anything beyond a mention of this and one theory that didn't make any sense.  

 

As I don't have one of those fancy tv-show computers where I can run a search for bestselling International Thrillers, restrict it to material between the years of 1985-2005, and check all of Tor's authors and their affiliated labels with last names of authors starting with an O' or other Irish name he may have used as a pen name...so has anyone figured out what book/series it might be?  I saw some theories that he may have written the first three books of Game of Thrones but dismissed that as it isn't an "international" novel nor is it a "thriller."  If he wrote another fantasy novel I would think perhaps he wrote one of the Sword of Truth novels, like the one which named him by "mistake" as the copyright holder due to that.  But it isn't an international thriller unless RJ was being sarcastic or being very broad/liberal with the term.

 

Any Ideas?

 

 

 

[Occams whiskey bottle]

I've noticed that you don't seem to have to sell a lot of books to become a NY Times bestseller, so I imagine that you probably need to sell less to be an International Bestseller. I think that if the rumor is true that there is a good chance that we haven't heard of the book or author that he ghost wrote for.

[szilard]

 The word (bestseller) has a negative connotation these days, don't you think?

 

------

 

For instance, to make The New York Times Non-Fiction printed list, it isn’t how many copies you have to sell, it is how many copies you have to sell within a given period of time—vs. all the other bestsellers—in this case a single week. Every so often a book seems to come from nowhere and leaps to the #1 spot on Amazon.com and The New York Times.

 

Publishers Weekly noted that Snooki’s A Shore Thing (which is categorized as a romance) only sold 8,998 copies yet made it onto the NYTimes extended list at 24.   Wall Street Journal reported that Laura Lippman’s book sold 4,000 copies on the week it was on the list.

 

Does being on Amazon.com’s bestselling list actually mean you are selling more than being on a New York Times list?  

In some cases, yes. It boils down to Actual Sales (Amazon.com) vs. Anticipated Sales from select bookstores (New York Times).

 

 

ResultSource, a San Diego-based marketing consultancy, specializes in getting books onto bestseller lists, according to The Wall Street Journal. For clients willing to pay enough, it will even guarantee a No. 1 spot. It does this by taking bulk sales and breaking them up into more organic-looking individual purchases, defeating safeguards that are supposed to make it impossible to “buy” bestseller status.

 

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/02/22/heres-how-you-buy-your-way-onto-the-new-york-times-bestsellers-list/#2d55c8913fd1

 

http://www.fastcompany.com/1813678/what-being-bestselling-author-really-means

 

http://dearauthor.com/features/letters-of-opinion/what-does-bestseller-title-really-mean/

 

http://www.tessgerritsen.com/how-many-copies-sold-is-a-bestseller/

Edited August 29, 2016 by szilard

[mb]

wiki sites; I would trust mainly the stuff they tell the source of.  also the stuff other sources repeat.

not much beyond those.

[Orderofolde]

Well when I heard that RJ said it in 2005 I start to think that maybe he did one of the Bourne novels after Ludlum passed away as his Estate did hire Ghost Writers to continue the Bourne series.  But is Bourne a thriler?  I can't think of anything else "International" from that time period.  RJ's quote stated he thought the book was good and he was a very modest man in some ways, especially when it came to his writing.  

[Occams whiskey bottle]

He probably wrote under a Tor/Forge label. Look for international bestsellers under that publisher during that time frame, and you'll probably be close.

 

Doubt it would be any of the Bourne books. They already have a no-name author writing them. No need for a ghost writer.

[mb]

I recall several book series that have more than 1 author.  James Bond; Left Behind (though it was co-authored); Infinity Ring; Dr Who.  and maybe Sherlock Homes.

 

some chance of Robert Jordan's ghostwritten book not published by Tor/Forge; especially if any of his other books (under any name) were published by different company/companies.

 

to the original poster::  could you provide the link of the Wikipedia page?

[Orderofolde]

It is the Wikipedia page on RJ found here, mentioned at the end of the first paragraph.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jordan

 

I also checked this out https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/2upv4d/mindblowing_secret_about_robert_jordan_revealed/ but wouldn't put much stock into it as it seemed to be the internet's version of a tabloid piece but it quotes the Wiki page.

[szilard]

 I saw some theories that he may have written the first three books of Game of Thrones

 

I think it is very interesting that there are so many epic fantasy authors out there but only RJ and GRRM and J. V. Jones (A Sword of Shadows) have similar writing style.

 

OFF

 

A Sword of Shadows is a good example that WOT what could have been if RJ focused on Rand alone.

[JenniferL]

Pointless Sanderson bashing and arguing over said bashing has been deleted. 

[Orderofolde]

???  Oh.  I got all excited that maybe someone had found something or had a theory on the International Novel that RJ Ghostwrote which this topic was about.  I'm sure someone else will also check in.  If you have any ideas, post them.  I'd love to read something else that he wrote even if it was in someone else's name.  Any theories on a thriller novel that reads like RJ's work?

[PP_Widmers]

I bet it's a Clancy novel. He had a lot of ghost writers, and if anyone can do the Clancy style of a 3000 word description for a single gunshot, its RJ.

[Zorlon]

RJ was a fantasy writer, at the time in question the Potter books were bestsellers, quite thrilling for their fans, and took pains to include an international set of characters.

 

The answer is obvious.