If you’re an unpublished or emerging novelist, you know the feeling well. You spend months in solitude, writing your novel. When it’s finished you might ask your partner to read it, or take portions to your writing group. But at the end of the day, it’s your book that you’ve labored over like a lonely monk in a castle tower.

Then you send your baby off to a literary agent or publisher. A few weeks later you get the curt reply: “Thank you, but your submission does not fit our needs at this time.”

After a few hundred of these, you self-publish the damn thing. You think, what the hell does it take to create a viable novel, not to mention a best seller?

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

It can take more than you imagine. Recently I picked up a copy of The Hours by Michael Cunningham.  It won the Pultizer Prize and was a best seller. The excerpts of reviews (printed on the first two pages) are effusive. The Boston Globe called it “a triumph.” You can’t do much better than that!

Out of curiosity, I turned to the acknowledgements at the end of the book. I wanted to see if there was anyone who helped Michael Cunningham write his novel – maybe an editor, or his literary agent. I was astonished to see a long list of people. Here is what the author wrote:

“I was helped enormously in the revising of this book by Jill Ciment, Judy Clain, Joel Conarroe, Stacey D’Erasmo, Bonnie Friedman, Marie Howe, and Adam Moss. Research, technical advice, and other forms of aid were generously provided by Dennis Dermody, Paul Elie, Carmen Gomezplata, Bill Hamilton, Ladd Spiegel, John Waters, and Wendy Welker. My agent, Gail Hochman, and my editor, Jonathan Galassi, are secular saints. Tracy O’Dwyer and Patrick Giles have provided more in the way of general inspiration than they may know, by reading as widely, discerningly, and voluptuously as they do….

“I received a residency from the Engelhard Foundation and a grant from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, both of which mattered considerably.”

The author, eighteen other people, and two charitable foundations all combined their talents and financial resources to write The Hours. With a team like that, a best seller would be the the least you’d expect!

To give this some context, I’ve spent more than a few years in the pop music industry. When an artist records a song and releases it to the public, it is mandatory that everyone who contributed to the recording be listed precisely. Therefore you will see detailed credits such as, “Joe Smith – drums, Suzy Jones –  handclaps, Rob Stone – percussion,” and so on. This tradition also includes the recording team. You’ll see credits like, “Garth White – engineer, Jeff James – mixing, Debby Small – mastering,” and so forth.

What we see in the literary industry is very different. In the case of The Hours, Michael Cunningham is the only name we see on the copyright page and on the cover. We accept the novel as being the singular vision and work product of one individual. We think of the romantic image of Jack Kerouc, feverishly typing his epic novel on one long roll of paper – the famous “scroll.” But at the back of The Hours a different image emerges. Suddenly the book looks more like the creation of a committee, of which Michael Cunningham was the chairperson. Its emergence as a best seller and literary triumph feels more like an inevitable marketing success than a stroke of individual artistic genius.

So the next time you’re laboring in solitude on your great American novel, remember that you’re competing against a well entrenched literary industry where vast resources are marshaled in support of carefully chosen figureheads. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I don’t know. It is what it is.

• Thomas Hauck is an author and professional ghostwriter and editor. You will very rarely find his name listed anywhere on his clients’ books – especially not as a ghostwriter!