Authorship is a glorious thing, but it can be faked. Sometimes a person's name is attached to a work that he in fact wrote little to none of, and he receives credit equal to or greater than the people who really wrote it. If they don't get any credit at all, then it's Stealing the Credit.
In more benign cases, this is due to that person being part of a team whose members all get credited on anything any of them worked on (this may be enforced by contract). In other cases, it's a star performer or big-name executive who insists on being recognized as the writer of the works they will make famous; such stars/executives are often allowed to get away with inserting their name into the byline after they contribute just enough to prove that they really did write part of it. This latter phenomenon is largely endemic to the music industry, where each credited songwriter usually receives an equal share of the royalties.
May overlap with Real Life works created by ghostwriters, people who actually did the work, but are not credited or receives very little credit, having been paid in advance for this contractual obligation, if the nominal author is actually a co-author.
See also In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It, for when anybody remotely connected with the work steals the spotlight by taking an unequal credit, and False Credit, for when somebody is credited with something that they made no contribution to.
Real Life Examples:
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Films — Live-Action
- In Hannibal, David Mamet is credited as one of the two writers, despite little to nothing of his draft used in the actual film. It was just because his contract demanded so.
- In Roberta, the lyrics of the Movie Bonus Song "Lovely to Look At" were credited to Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. Fields was the actual lyricist; McHugh was the composer Fields normally worked with as a team.
- In general, The Writers Guild of America has a lot of authority of which writers are credited on a film, how writers are credited and in what order they are given credit. In some instances, movies that go through several drafts through long development periods may have several writers credited if the Guild deems their contribution enough to be given a screen credit, even if the final product winds up far different.
Literature
- The Bourne Series - books 4 to 14 all credit Robert Ludlum, as well as their actual writer, Eric Van Lustbader, even though Ludlum only actually wrote the original 3.
Live-Action TV
- Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics to the Star Trek: The Original Series Theme Tune, never used on the show, and never intended to be used on the show, so he could lay claim to some of the royalties. The tune's composer, Alexander Courage, was new to contract law at the time and signed away his right to not have lyrics.
Music
- Al Jolson made a habit of agreeing to introduce new popular songs to the public on the condition that he would be allowed to change a few words of the lyric, which would allow him to claim a songwriting credit and equal share of the royalties. This is how his name was attached to many, many hit songs, e.g. "Avalon," "Me and My Shadow," "Sonny Boy."
- During their career in The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney agreed that they'd be credited as equal co-authors for all Beatles songs that they wrote, so Lennon is (and his estate gets royalties for his being) co-author of "Yesterday" even though McCartney wrote it all by himself.
- The Beach Boys: Mike Love sued bandleader Brian Wilson in 1992 over authorship credits for 79 of the group's songs; he ultimately got his name added to 35 of them. Many of the affected songs featured him contributing minor ad-libs such as the lines "goodnight baby, sleep tight baby" in "Wouldn't It Be Nice?"
- Genesis: During Peter Gabriel's tenure as frontman, the band had a policy of crediting every song to the full group to reduce infighting. This was even the case for songs that were primarily written by one or two members, such as "More Fool Me" (written by Mike Rutherford & Phil Collins) and "Counting Out Time" (written by Gabriel). The band abandoned the policy in favor of individual credits following Gabriel's departure, which resulted in the infighting that they wanted to avoid, which factored into Steve Hackett's departure.
- When Led Zeppelin wrote their Ritchie Valens pastiche "Boogie with Stu," they decided to give a writing credit to Valens' mother, as they'd heard that she never got any money from his music after his death. She obviously had nothing to do with writing the song (and the band didn't even know her name, crediting her as "Mama Valens"). This didn't prevent the band from being sued by the studio who actually owned the rights to Valens' music.
- Bob Marley wrote the song "No Woman No Cry" himself. However, he gave songwriting credit to his friend Vincent Ford who was able to continue to operate his soup kitchen as a result of the royalty payments.
- Queen: Following Freddie Mercury's HIV diagnosis in 1987, the band decided to credit all of their songs to the entire band regardless of who actually wrote it. For instance, "Scandal" was written solely by Brian May and "These Are the Days of Our Lives" was written solely by Roger Taylor, but the whole band is credited for them.
Other Material
- When the physicist George Gamow co-wrote a paper with his student Ralph Alpher, he wanted to add the name of his friend Hans Bethe to the paper so the authorship went Alpha, Bethe, Gamow (alpha, beta, gamma). Bethe read the paper, agreed with its findings, and went along with it, unlike another scientist whom Gamow had asked to change his name to Delter.
- The scientific paper "Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc ³He" was published in the journal Physical Review (November 1975), and was credited to J. H. Hetherington and F. D. C. Willard. However, only Hetherington authored it and the supposed coauthor was actually his pet cat Chester (Felis Domesticus Chester Willard - Willard being Chester's father's name). This was because a colleague pointed out Hetherington had accidentally written the paper in first person plural so it would be rejected, and rather than retype it all in the days before digital word editors he decided it was easier to add a second author.
Fictional examples:
Comic Books
- In more than one Dilbert strip the Pointy-Haired Boss insists that Dilbert add his name to the patent application since the program was written while Dilbert is an employee.
Live-Action TV
- In the Columbo episode "Murder by the Book". The mystery-writing team of Ken Franklin and Jim Ferris is like this. Ferris does all the actual writing, and Franklin handles all the interviews, book signings, and other publicity events. When Ferris decides he wants to write more serious literature and tries to dissolve the partnership, Franklin murders him.
Western Animation
- Joked about in a Cutaway Gag in the Family Guy episode, "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High". Matt Damon finishes writing Good Will Hunting and Ben Affleck asks for a co-writing credit. Damon angrily claims that Affleck did nothing but eat ice cream and smoke pot the entire time.
