There’s something to be said about getting paid to write about your favorite characters. Writers can work for hire to write novels based on other companies’ intellectual properties, such as Star Wars and Spider-Man. Many authors have taken these jobs — way more authors than you probably think. To prove it, I’ve pulled together a list of famous authors you didn’t know wrote franchise novels below.

Franchise novels get a bad rap. Authors who “write IP,” in industry parlance, don’t retain the rights to their work, because they were hired to write for a particular publisher or media franchise. Responding to Twitter discourse that IP writing was “soulless,” Chuck Wendig writes that “it’s really not all downside — because the one upside is, you get to write in a space you love. You get to put your heart into a storyworld that has influenced you in some way — you’re giving back to it, you’re owning a little postage-stamp-sized piece of creative real estate in a narrative that fed you. And that’s the reward, which is…Well, sorta the opposite of soulless.”

Just like there’s nothing wrong with writing IP, there’s nothing wrong with reading it, either. Chances are pretty high that one or more of your favorite authors has written a franchise novel. Here are just a few:

10 Famous Authors You Didn’t Know Wrote Franchise Novels