This stems out of the recent Kaavya Viswanathan scandal:

In TIME magazine, James Poniewozik noted that Kaavya shares her copyright for her book with Alloy Entertainment, a book packager.  This means the company "develops ideas" and "hires writers" who "deliver a finished product to publishers." 

I must admit, I'm an aspiring author, so this makes me think.  Packaged publishing?  WTF?  How do I evem describe it? 

I always that that part of being a good author was the creativity to come up with wonderful ideas,
but now, it seems like being a good author just means being good enough to convey someone else's ideas (or maybe plagiarizing others).  Is society to blame?  Partially, with chick lit like The Clique and The A - List being the No. 1 bestsellers of teen fiction.  And since it is universally accepted that teens spend a lot of money (sarcasm), then this is the market everyone wants to corner.

But I don't know.  If I was a writer of packaged publishing, I think I might feel somewhat empty.  Or somewhat like I fake.  But it seems like a good springboard to start off with, and I would not feel bad if I helped formulate the story plot.  This is like me coming up with the idea and Alloy telling me if it needs to be tweaked, what should be added - and we collaborate until we come up with a happy compromise.  What do you think?