Adventure Books, are you objecting to licensed tie-ins, like Alan Dean Foster's Star Trek Logs or Little Cindy Lu Who's story about the awesome adventures she had on the Starship Enterprise and how all the crew came to her birthday party to thank her for saving the planet?

Because they're obviously of differing quality and occupy a different economic and perhaps legal niche, but I don't believe they're morally different as your term 'wrong' would suggest.

"a tactic to boost CD sales?" As opposed to what, some sort of religious act? What on earth did people think it was?