I'm not sure if this is true, but from what I've heard, L.J. Smith never actually owned 'The Vampire Diaries'. She was employed to write the books for Alloy Entertainment Ltd, the book packaging section of Alloy Media, which were then published by HarperCollins. So although Smith is the author of all the books so far, she owns no part of them and they are in fact owned by Alloy Entertainment. In other words, the series is written to hire.
As for why they fired her, there are rumours going round that Smith and Alloy Entertainment were disagreeing about much of her work. Apparently, they cut scenes out of the books and weren't happy with the direction that Smith was taking the storylines, for example the things that Smith had planned for Bonnie.
I don't know if this is correct or not, it's just what I've heard. Of course, there's nothing we can do about it, unless you boycott any books published from now on.
I really hope they don't change the storylines too much, like they've done for the tv series and stefan's diaries
