Now that he is the world’s bestselling author and Little, Brown’s most prized possession, Patterson seemed agreeable, easygoing.
ALL JAMES PATTERSON BOOKS IN ORDER FULL
His attitude was that we were in business together, and he wanted us both to succeed, but it was not going to be fun and games.”īut that was when Patterson was still making a name for himself and fighting for his publisher’s full attention. “A lot of authors are just grateful to be published,” Holly Parmelee, Patterson’s publicist from 1992 to 2002, told me several weeks earlier. Unsatisfied with publishing’s informal approach to marketing meetings, Patterson had expected corporate-style presentations, complete with comprehensive market-share data and sales trends. Pietsch mentioned a possible promotional line, “New York Has a New Hero.” Patterson instantly amended it: “ Finally, New York Has a Hero.”Ī number of former Little, Brown employees who attended these sorts of meetings with Patterson in the 1990s and early 2000s described him to me as low-key but intimidating, more cutthroat adman than retiring writer - a kind of real-life Don Draper. At one point, the conversation turned to the next installment in Patterson’s Michael Bennett series, which revolves around a Manhattan homicide detective and widower with 10 multiracial adopted children (“Cheaper by the Dozen” meets “Die Hard,” as Patterson describes it). From the plush, caramel-colored couch facing them, Patterson, who is a trim 62 with a habitual slouch and laconic manner well suited to his dry sense of humor, acted as creative director, a familiar role from his years in advertising. Pietsch and Tingley showed mock-ups of covers and presented ideas they had been working on. Walter Thompson, served coffee and gooey chocolate-chip cookies to the guests: Pietsch Megan Tingley, the publisher of Little, Brown’s young-readers books and David Young, the C.E.O. Patterson’s wife, Sue, a tall, athletic-looking blonde whom he met at J. The meeting was held not, as you might expect, at the publisher’s offices in Midtown Manhattan but in the living room of Patterson’s Palm Beach home, a canary yellow Spanish-style house on a small island in Lake Worth. “Jim is at the very least co-publisher of his own books,” Michael Pietsch, Patterson’s editor and the publisher of Little, Brown, told me.Ī couple of months ago, I sat in on one of Patterson’s regular meetings with Little, Brown to discuss the marketing and publicity for his coming titles. Walter Thompson’s North American branch before becoming a full-time writer in 1996 - he handles all of his own advertising and closely monitors just about every other step of the publication process, from the design of his jackets to the timing of his books’ release to their placement in stores. Despite this support staff and his prodigious output, Patterson is intimately involved in the publication of his books. In addition to his two editors, Patterson has three full-time Hachette employees (plus assistants) devoted exclusively to him: a so-called brand manager who shepherds Patterson’s adult books through the production process, a marketing director for his young-adult titles and a sales manager for all his books. Patterson and his publisher, Little, Brown & Co., a division of the Hachette Book Group, have an unconventional relationship. He is listed in the latest edition of “Guinness World Records,” published last fall, as the author with the most New York Times best sellers, 45, but that number is already out of date: he now has 51 - 35 of which went to No. Here are just a few: Since 2006, one out of every 17 novels bought in the United States was written by James Patterson. There are many different ways to catalog Patterson’s staggering success. sales in recent years still don’t match Patterson’s.) This is partly because Patterson is so prolific: with the help of his stable of co-authors, he published nine original hardcover books in 2009 and will publish at least nine more in 2010. (According to Nielsen BookScan, Grisham’s, King’s and Brown’s combined U.S.
Patterson may lack the name recognition of a Stephen King, a John Grisham or a Dan Brown, but he outsells them all. Last year, an estimated 14 million copies of his books in 38 different languages found their way onto beach blankets, airplanes and nightstands around the world. It sold about 10,000 copies, a modest, if respectable, showing for a first novel. Like most authors, James Patterson started out with one book, released in 1976, that he struggled to get published.
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