WHEN KYLIE JENNER WRITES A NOVEL

Celebrities occasionally like to try their hand at fiction. But who’s really the author?

- Sophie Vershbow

CELEBRITY MEMOIRS are a dime a dozen, but there's a smaller cohort of stars who have tried to add "novelist" to their résumés. This includes Kylie and Kendall Jenner, who wrote the 2014 YA novel Rebels: City of Indra; Carrie Fisher, author of the deeply autobiographical Postcards From the Edge; and Tyra Banks, whose 569page Modelland is about a girl named Tookie De La Crème. In early October, Reese Witherspoon announced she was collaborating with the best-selling thriller author Harlan Coben. But what does it mean when a celebrity decides to write fiction? Here, the writers and agents working behind the scenes on similar books tell us how it actually works.

A LONGTIME GHOSTWRITER OF MORE THAN 30 FICTION AND NONFICTION BOOKS WHO

Wrote a Reality-TV Personality's Beach-Read Series and a Novel for the Star of a Teen Show

I DID A COUPLE novels with a reality star. I was hired because I had done other ghostwriting work for the publisher and I had done YA novels under my own name. The reality star had no part of this world; it was really just a business opportunity for her. The publisher recommended me, and her team was just like, "Okay."

We had an initial phone call, and we talked loosely about what the plot would be, about what the goals of the book were, and then she went off to film the show.

I wrote the book in seven weeks-for fiction, it's the record for me-then she read the draft and we had a call and talked about edits, which were minimal.

We didn't even meet until the photo shoot for the cover of the second book.