Claire Chazal was a well-known newswoman who presented the evening news on France's TF1 network. Like many French celebrities, she had decided to write a novel. She titled it L'Institutrice (The Primary School Teacher). It was published in 1997 by Plon and became a bestseller.

In 2000, the editors of Voici magazine, a weekly tabloid, decided to use her novel to prove that the success of novels by celebrities has little to do with the literary merit of the novels themselves and everything to do with the fame of their authors.

They changed the title of her novel to Maitresse d'Ecole, altered the names of some of the characters, and changed the two opening sentences. They then submitted the manuscript to numerous publishing houses, claiming it was a work by an unknown author. Every publisher rejected it, including Chazal's own publisher, Plon. To add insult to injury, Plon not only didn't recognize the book, but also suggested that the author should send a self-addressed/stamped envelope if she wanted the manuscript back.

Jacques Colin, editor of Voici, commented: "publishers open their doors wide to novels by celebrity authors ... which would never have been published if they had been signed by an obscure writer."

Chazal did not comment on the hoax.

In 1983 the novel The Diary of a Good Neighbor was published in Great Britain and the United States. It told the story of a successful middle-aged magazine editor who befriends a lonely old woman. The cover identified the author as Jane Somers, a name that was said to be the pseudonym of a "well-known English woman journalist." The book received little critical attention, and had only modest sales. Approximately 1500 copies sold in the UK and 3000 in the United States.

A year later a sequel appeared, If the Old Could. But upon its publication, Doris Lessing revealed herself to be the author of both works. More >>>

Too much dialogue, not enough exposition, weak story line Casablanca is arguably the most famous movie in the history of film. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1943, and was voted as one of the top three American films ever made by the American Film Institute. It's a movie that everyone in the film industry should instantly be able to recognize. But in 1982 freelance writer Chuck Ross asked himself this question: Would contemporary Hollywood movie agents actually be able to recognize Casablanca if it was submitted to them as a script? Or failing that, would they at least be able to recognize it as great writing?

To find out, Ross devised an experiment. He retyped the script of Casablanca, changed its title to "Everybody Comes to Rick's" (the title of the original play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison), changed the name of Rick's sidekick from Sam to Dooley (after Dooley Wilson, the actor who played that character), and submitted it to 217 agencies as a script supposedly by an unknown writer, "Erik Demos." More >>>

In 1975 Chuck Ross was selling cable TV door-to-door, and dreaming of becoming a writer. However, he felt the odds were stacked against him since the publishing industry seemed incapable of recognizing talent. To prove his theory, he typed up twenty-one pages of a highly acclaimed book and sent it unsolicited to four publishers (Random House, Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday, and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), claiming it was his own work. The work he chose for this experiment was Steps, by Jerzy Kosinski. It had won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1969 and by 1975 had sold over 400,000 copies. All four publishers rejected the work, including Random House, who was its original publisher. More >>>

In 1887 a "disappointed literary aspirant," hoping to illustrate the ignorance of publishers and the diffulties faced by unknown authors, copied out the text of Milton's drama "Samson Agonistes," retitled it "Like a Giant Refreshed," and sent it as an original work of his own to publishers and editors. None recognized the work. One rejected it because it was too like a sensational novel. Another said it was "disfigured by Scotticisms." A third offered to publish it, but only if the author contributed thirty pounds toward the expenses.

The literary aspirant (whose name is not known) published the results of his experiment in a letter sent to the St. James's Gazette.

Under the heading "Posthumous Poetry," Indiana's Kokomo Dispatch published a poem titled "Leonainie" on August 3, 1877. It was an unremarkable poem except in one way. The editor of the Dispatch, John Henderson, claimed it was a previously unpublished poem by Edgar Allan Poe. (Click here to read the poem.)

The publication of this poem generated excitement among fans and scholars of Poe, and within a few weeks it had been reprinted in major papers throughout the United States. But in reality it was not a poem by Poe. Its true author was a struggling young Indiana poet, James Whitcomb Riley. More >>>