Source: The Washington Post [final edition], 27 May 1993, pD1

When a living novelist writes a bestseller, she gets the money. When a dead novelist writes one -- well, then everything's negotiable, if the case of V.C. Andrews is any guide.

After the extremely popular horror novelist died in 1986, her longtime editor, Ann Patty, tried to ghostwrite a new Andrews book. She couldn't make it work, and a professional novelist was brought in to do the job.

Patty, however, soon demanded money from the ghostwriter for her creative contributions, making him pay her directly a sum in excess of $50,000 over several years, according to court papers filed in a Norfolk tax case. The suit was brought by the Andrews estate, which is disputing with the IRS how much Andrews's name was worth after her death.

"Essentially," ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman said in his deposition in the case, "money was demanded of me from [Patty] for her participation in the process. ... I guess it's legal but it's just not ethical. ... I mean, what you have here is a situation where the person who judges my work wants to participate in doing it and be paid for it, so it's kind of -- I'm kind of squeezed, if you can understand that."

Patty, a senior executive at Simon and Schuster who is in charge of the house's prestigious Poseidon Press imprint, did not return a half-dozen requests for comment over the past three weeks. Company spokeswomen said over this same period that neither Jack Romanos, the head of S&S's consumer division, nor S&S Chairman Richard Snyder would comment.

Late yesterday, after being told this story was going to press, S&S issued this statement: "Ann Patty has been an integral and valued member of the Simon and Schuster family for 15 years. Any involvement she had with the V.C. Andrews project was fully authorized by Simon and Schuster and we completely stand behind her integrity, which she has proven over the years."

While the statement seems to imply that Patty had the full backing of her bosses in her unorthodox solicitations from Neiderman, a spokeswoman said: "That's your interpretation." Further explanation was not provided.

Executives at other publishers were alarmed at the very notion of an editor demanding money from one of his own writers, saying it would create a whole mess of ethical problems.

"It's something you just don't do," said Howard Kaminsky, the chief of William Morrow. "Editors are paid to edit. If they feel they're due compensation beyond that, they should leave their jobs and write."

Said Donald Lamm, chairman of W.W. Norton: "I find it morally indefensible. It's like a doctor saying, 'I gave you an extra 20 years by my brilliant heart surgery, so I deserve to get 10 percent of your income over the next 20 years.' It'd be the unraveling of publishing if this started happening."

Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus and Giroux was most succinct: "I think that's smelly." Editors, he pointed out, are already rewarded by their employers for publishing successful books, in the form of bonuses and promotions.

Patty published Andrews's first book, Flowers in the Attic, as a paperback original in 1979. She worked very closely with the Virginia Beach author, who used a wheelchair and was generally reclusive; as Andrews became increasingly popular, Patty rose to success along with her at Simon and Schuster.

In only a few years, the author became a multimillionaire -- her estate was valued at $8 million, and it's made millions more since -- and Patty was given the opportunity to start Poseidon, an independent publishing line under the Simon and Schuster umbrella. Poseidon issued Andrews's books in hardcover, while S&S's Pocket Books division brought them out in paperback.

After Andrews's death on Dec. 19, 1986, Simon and Schuster decided to continue publishing the books. Why put an end to a good thing? When Patty found she couldn't do the actual ghosting herself, Neiderman became a logical possibility: Not only did he share an agent, Anita Diamant, with Andrews, but he had also written horror novels that were edited by none other than Patty herself. Everyone knew one another, everyone was friendly.

Meetings were scheduled, discussions held. Neiderman said in his deposition that Patty "extracted concepts from me and my creative input, I then attempted to write like V.C. Andrews in what I would call like an audition and made some improvements on it."

Neiderman passed his "audition," and was advanced $250,000 for the first book. His contract was with the Andrews estate, not Simon and Schuster, although he dealt principally with Patty. She knew Andrews's style intimately, and was the best gauge of whether Neiderman was a successful mimic.

Still, he said in his deposition, "She wasn't doing any of the rewriting. She was doing what you would call the analysis and then assigning the rewriting, which is what an editor does."

But what an editor doesn't do is demand money from the writer in return for doing this. In an interview from his home in Palm Springs, Calif., Neiderman said, "Perhaps I was a fool to go along" with Patty's demands for money.

"I was much younger in terms of my career, I wasn't that familiar with what goes on in publishing, whether this was done by other writers and editors or not," he said. "And this really was a unique situation."

Diamant, the agent, speculated about Patty's actions: "She felt she had worked with [Andrews] for so long that in some way she should be compensated. She jokingly said to me, 'Do you think she'll leave me something in her will?' I said, 'I'm sure she won't.' "

A 1991 letter from the coexecutor of the Andrews estate, Charles Payne, to Neiderman has been made a government exhibit in the tax case. In the letter, Payne reprimands the ghostwriter severely for giving money to Patty.

"[Y]ou secretly paid her large sums of money for her supposed contribution to the creative work. You, in other words, sub-contracted with her despite its being a breach of your contract, and in spite of the conflict of interest on her part," Payne wrote.

"As time went by," he added, "she demanded ever-increasing amounts of money from you. ... No matter what you did for her, no matter how kind you were to her, she continually came back demanding ever-increasing amounts of money, to the point that you were willing to risk the entire project to get rid of her."

Matters came to a head four years ago in a serious squabble -- the letter refers to "the legal fees incurred by the Andrews [family] in our efforts to get rid of [Patty]." Neiderman was assigned a different editor, and subsequent books were published in hardcover by the Pocket Books division.

Neiderman, these days a very successful writer as well as more experienced in the ways of publishing, said he wouldn't consider paying an editor now. He confirmed that the total amount he had paid Patty was correctly reported in government filings in the tax case as in excess of $50,000, although he wouldn't say how much the excess was.

"Regardless of what happened between us," he added, "she happens to be one of the best editors in New York."

Full text © The Washington Post, 27 May 1993