Ghostwriting is common among business leaders, sports figures and celebrities... and cooks. One such ghostwriter, with years of experience writes about the craft in the New York Times. The parts that I liked:

• One recent best-selling tome on regional cooking was produced entirely in a New York apartment kitchen, with almost no input from the author.
• “Write up something about all the kinds of chiles,” one Mexican-American chef demanded of me, providing no further details. “There should be a really solid guide to poultry,” a barbecue maven prescribed for his own forthcoming book. (After much stalling, he sent the writer a link to the Wikipedia page for “chicken.”)