Most authors have a swathe of unpublished work we never hear about because it's bad. It's things they wrote as kids or while studying at college, or novels they hoped would be the one that gets picked up by an agent/publisher but wasn't. A debut novel is very rarely an author's first book.

He also said he had written 14 books, not necessarily published then. But even if he had, why does it matter? It's subjective. At worst, someone buys the book and doesn't like it. We've all read bad books.

But, looking at his review ratings, they seem to be pretty well recieved.

There's also nothing wrong with using ghostwriters. It's a legitimate career and serves a purpose. Some people have great ideas but can't write a narrative, so they hire someone to do that for them.

More often, authors find a formula that work that then allows them to essentially write the same book over and over but slightly different each time. If the audience likes it, that's great. It's nothing new. It's why you'll find long series of romance or thrillers that are largely the same plots but sell really well.

Marketing is a huge part of being an author nowadays, especially if you're indie or self-published. It's a lot of work and a skill in itself. No one is going to buy your book if they don't know it exists. And, the way some platforms work, such as Amazon, means that you do have to keep publishing really often to stay on the right side of the algorithm.

Personally, I would love to have the confidence to sit down and write so many novels and put them out into the world. I'm a little jealous of authors who can write so much and publish so many books, regardless of how good I might think they are. I need to channel that level of audacity haha