They are in contradiction, because the author starts by saying how much he enjoyed the Stratemeyer Content Mill books (full disclosure - I did too) and then says that if only he'd known...

But he didn't. And it didn't affect his experience until he found out.

Which strongly suggests there was nothing wrong with the reading experience, and no lack of "authenticity" in the text itself, on its own terms.

It was a chimera.

As far as most readers knew, Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, and Victor Appleton were all authentically real people.

Discovering they weren't didn't change the quality of the writing - it only changed the implied relationship with the author.

But that's a parasocial experience, not a feature of the words on the page.

I suppose the implication is that because the book went through the mill the author and publisher somehow didn't really mean them.

Perhaps they were tainted by money instead of being products of pure enlightened generous impulse.

But how can you not mean something like a Tom Swift book?

The series was incredibly successful and had real social influence. Would it have been more successful if Victor Appleton wasn't a made-up person?

Why do we expect authors to be scrupulously physical, when creating imaginary people and imaginary worlds is literally the job description?