Star Quality

“Star Quality” by Linda Sue Park brings up some very good points. Fame often brings celebrities many new opportunities, many times including writing books. However, it is unacceptable for these books not to be up to par with other children’s books. A book with a celebrity author is very likely to sell well just because the name is recognizable. It is unfair to the reader to have to read a book that has not fulfilled its potential.
To me it seems that celebrities want to be good at whatever they do; no actor wants to be known as a bad or untalented actor. So why wouldn’t the same go for the books that theses celebrities write? I would think that celebrities would want feedback and advice on their books, and that editors and publishers would not be too concerned to recommend changes.
Out of the books we have read so far, J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer stand out the most as celebrity authors. While both started out as unknown people, their creative stories have lead them to be very well known. I think most would agree that both book series could probably be written a little bit better. For me, I love the story-lines, and would love to see how much better the books would be with a little more editing and nit-picking.
Now that the Harry Potter and Twilight series have made such good names for themselves, and made celebrities out of their authors, I think that Rowling and Meyer could probably sell just about anything. As a reader, regardless of how good the book actually is, I would be willing to buy a new book by either author based on the experience I had reading their other works. I think both authors, and their editors and publishers could take advantage of their popularity and sell anything written by them. However, I don’t think this is what anyone wants. The authors do not want to be known as terrible writers, and unless their books continue to at least maintain average quality, readers will eventually catch on.
Celebrity authors should want to be associated with high-quality writing ability and subject matter, and should not settle for anything less just because their name will sell their books. In the end both the readers and celebrity authors will suffer if the editors and publishers do not do their job.