Why Does the Public So Readily Believe Public Figures Write Their Own Books?

It seems to me a good question--but one that is also easily answered.

Simply put, the public believes what the media tells them generally, with such skepticism as they display coming from their getting conflicting messages from the media such that it is really a matter of which piece of it they believe (MSNBC says one thing, FOX something else), or what they are told conflicts with personal experience they cannot ignore (like the reality of the falling purchasing power of their wages, no matter how the New York Times and company gaslight them about that), and neither of those is really operative in this area. Quite the contrary, common prejudices reinforce their readiness to believe that public figures write their own books, the most important of which is that they don't realize how much work goes into a book, or even the manuscript from which a book might be developed. They don't realize that writing is work, often very hard work, and they don't appreciate that it takes a measure of intelligence, skill and sustained effort that is often beyond what many a person of above average intelligence, education and diligence possesses to write even a fairly crummy manuscript of book-length--in part because writing skills get so very little respect in this society. And so they never wonder why the sub-literate they see in interviews and whose comments they read on social media apparently manages the feat, or where some celebrity who spends all their time preening for the camera when they are not leading a life of dissipation found the time to do so.

I suspect that those who have had the experience of teaching writing--and therefore had to deal with students who dismiss their evaluations of their work as "all subjective" (i.e. "Your opinion means nothing more than anyone else's")--will find this reality easier to understand than others.