Why did it not occur to me TMBG might have covered the song?

I shall try to do better in future.

I suppose I need to know exactly how the collaboration worked in order to become invested in the work – which sections were written by which writer etc.

I have similar a problem with ghost-writing. I remember being crushed when I discovered Carolyn Keene wasn’t a real person.

So I have no prejudice against collaborations when both authors are equally known to me, as with most of the above pairs, or equally unknown, as with Wrede and Stevermer; but somehow I feel cautious about collaborations with one very famous author and one unknown, as some previous commenters have said. I suspect, probably without evidence, that the famous author provided little more than a plot outline, or an opening they hadn’t been able to continue writing somehow, and the less experienced author did most of the work.

I think L. Sprague de Camp said somewhere that he thought the best collaboration mode (he and Pratt had tried several) was for the two authors to talk together about the ideas, characters, plot outline etc., then for the less experienced author to write the first draft and the more experienced author to write the final draft. My impression is that the more common mode is for the authors to trade off writing scene by scene or chapter by chapter. Pratchett and Gaiman, if I recall correctly, took advantage of their different sleep-wake cycles and time zones to work on the book 24 hours a day, Pratchett writing during his normal waking hours and sending the draft of the new scenes to Gaiman just as he was waking up. Brust and Bull or Wrede and Stevermer’s method of having each author write the first-person narration for specific characters also seems to work well. (Brust said somewhere that they each wrote the characters most unlike themselves in philosophy or worldview, for the challenge of the thing.)

I can’t say much about collaboration novels because, honestly, I haven’t read many. I guess I’ll have to get working on that. But I do love Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and How to Be Bad, and I think in both cases, the narratives from different authors made the novels kind of more fresh and, I dunno, just intriguing because the characters all see each other as so different from how they see themselves, which I think just make it kind of more real and cool. I dunno.

Ooh, I feel like you’ve been asked this before, but I can’t remember the answer, so… Would you and Scott ever write a novel together? Because that, well, it’s hard to imagine, but I think it’d be awesome.

Other collaborations, though, seem more mysterious. Did they write chapter by chapter? on the phone? emailing back and forth and editing each other’s writing? That uncertainty can change the book for a reader, because you can’t fully imagine how the book came about the way you normally can. There’s something about collaborations that makes me confused. I know for myself that every time I’ve tried to write a story with a friend, it tends to flop miserably.

Then again, sometimes it works. Good Omens, the Peter and the Starcatchers series, etc. Pure dead awesome!

In high school I read anything by Stephen King I could get my hands on, but I never got to The Talisman for one reason or another. The fact that I was unfamiliar with Peter Straub didn’t really dampen my enthusiasm, it’s just that I always found something else to read. But at the same time I read Good Omens after discovering Gaiman; I think perhaps because he didn’t have as large a body of his own work as King (and still doesn’t, but who does?). And I really liked Omens; since I wasn’t familiar with Pratchett until recently, I didn’t care about identifying which aspects were his or which were Gaiman’s. I just enjoyed the book as its own work.

Then last year after discovering William Gibson I bought The Difference Engine, even though I’ve never read anything by Sterling. I haven’t read it yet, but I except like Omens I’ll just read it as its own work.

But seeing two names on a cover, even if I’m unfamiliar with both, means nothing to me. Sometimes, like with comics, both creators are strengthened by working with someone else. Elfquest and Girl Genius are both done by husband/wife teams, and they’re both outstanding works.

If I’ve read neither or both of the authors, though, I will be more likely to pick up their book. I really like PJ Tracy’s mysteries, which are written by a woman and her daughter, and ‘Good Omens.’

I’m not usually such a fan of “the author died, lets get their $relative to write more like this” though, they often suck (most (not all, I <3 Sanderson) "author is dead, let us introduce new author to series" stuff sucks anyway, but picking a relative seems to suck worse IMLE)

There’s a curve, I suppose… you positively expect TV and films to be written in some sort of collaboration, and anyway the process of making the final item, with director, producers, actors oaring in, is pretty collaborative all the way through; and you get other co-creators like Powell & Pressburger or The Coen Brothers. Also comedy writing lends itself to teamwork, and popular music.

In works of genre fiction you see occasional collaborations, and critically and commercially successful ones (though sometimes two people are subsumed in one joint name). For theatre plays and literary fiction, rarely – I expect there’ve been some but can’t think of any right now (apart from the input of an editor; I read Golding’s Lor of the Flies had a lot of editorial shaping). Classical music too.
And in poetry, I imagine there are next to no collaborations* (visual art the same – Gilbert and George must be pretty unusual).

At a guess, the more personal and from-the-soul-expresssion the type of work, the more the audience finds a collaboration somehow inauthentic… (so awareness of the contribution of the editor or partner or anyone else is suppressed, or anyway not much bruited)

As for Istanbul, it’s a fabulous city. Looks great, with huge ancient mosques (some of them former ancient churches), big ships plying the waterways, hills and trams and markets. I arrived there once on business at about 6am after a three hour flight from Tehran (attending the Tehran Book Fair) and checked into my hotel and turned on the TV and, rather surreally, there was my uncle on the screen! He was an actor, and the single episode of Hadleigh (1976) he was in was showing.

*Apparently TS Eliot took on board suggestions from his editor, from his first wife, and from Ezra Pound.

As for collaborations, I enjoy them a lot of the time. The Sorcery and Cecilia books by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer are some of the more lovely comfort reads I’ve encountered, for instance. I agree with Dan Goodman about good collaborations reading like a third author with even more strengths.