Who wrote the Big Book?

While AA co-founder Bill W. is often credited with writing The Big Book in a talk Bill gave in 1954 he describes his role as more like that of an editor. In part he said

So, the preparation started and some more chapters were done and we went to A.A. meetings in New York with these chapters in the rough. It wasn't like chicken-in-the-rough; the boys didn't eat those chapters up at all. I suddenly discovered that I was in this terrific whirlpool of arguments. I was just the umpire - I finally had to stipulate. "Well boys, over here you got the Wholly Rollers who say we need all the good old-fashioned stuff in the book, and over here you tell me we've got to have a psychological book, and that never cured anybody, and they didn't do very much with us in the missions, so I guess you will have to leave me just to be the umpire. I'll scribble out some roughs here and show them to you and let's get the comments in." So we fought, bled and died our way through one chapter after another. We sent them out to Akron and they were peddled around and there were terrific hassles about what should go in this book and what should not. Meanwhile, we set drunks up to write their stories or we had newspaper people to write the stories for them to go in the back of the book. We had an idea that we'd have a text and all and then we'd have stories all about the drunks who were staying sober.

For more see http://www.barefootsworld.net/aabook1954.html

Despite the group nature of the authorship, Bill W. claimed sole authorship of the book and claimed royalty payments on the book until and beyond his death. Some details can be found at this (stridently anti-A.A.) site.