News James Patterson is more a successful book pimp, but OK

[Pamela Jo]

James Patterson Is Giving $300K in Holiday Bonuses to Indy Booksellers

The bestselling author is getting into the holiday spirit.

observer.com

 

[LJ Beck]

OMG he must make a shit ton of money to be giving away so much. I know that's not what I should take away from that article, but that's all I can think about.

I watched his master class on writing, and it was really good. Then I picked up one of his books, as I'd never read any of his before, and I couldn't get through it. Go figure.

 

[Pamela Jo]

OMG he must make a shit ton of money to be giving away so much. I know that's not what I should take away from that article, but that's all I can think about.

I watched his master class on writing, and it was really good. Then I picked up one of his books, as I'd never read any of his before, and I couldn't get through it. Go figure.

The trick is to get desperate writers to write them for you using your formula. He's essentially the Godfather of AI.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/james-patterson-doesnt-write-his-books-and-his-newest-readers-dont-read/2016/06/06/88e7d3c0-28c2-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html

In the past year, he’s written 117 volumes for BookShots.

Although written is not the precise verb. Conceived, outlined, co-written and curated. Patterson delivers exhaustive notes and outlines, sometimes running 80 pages, to co-authors, his printer regularly discharging collaborators' efforts like lottery tickets. "The success rate when I write the outline is almost 100 percent. When other people do, it's 50 to 60 percent," he says.
He is among the first writers credited with promoting books through television spots, releasing more than one title a year, and maintaining a stable of writers that rivals this year's field at the Kentucky Derby. "It may be a factory," Robinson says, "but it's a hand-tooled factory."

 

[LJ Beck]

Oh there's no question this guy has a sure-fire money-making formula. He talks about it in his master class a little bit as well. How he's now co-writing books. I'm sure the guy is tired. And probably bored as hell with his formula. Would be really interesting to see him abandon that, and do something completely new. Although never having made it through one of his books, I wouldn't know the difference.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Oh there's no question this guy has a sure-fire money-making formula. He talks about it in his master class a little bit as well. How he's now co-writing books. I'm sure the guy is tired. And probably bored as hell with his formula. Would be really interesting to see him abandon that, and do something completely new. Although never having made it through one of his books, I wouldn't know the difference.

No HE's ALWAYS "co-written" books. That stable of writers is his success formula. I knew a writer who wrote for him because she was desperate to get published and thought if she took his deal she could at least have a resume that said SOMETHING by her was published. She got paid a pittance and though I lost track of her-unless she's published under pseudonym it didnt work. You want to know the future for writers under AI-it's this guy. If he's giving back to booksellers it's because he's afraid his golden goose is dying.

 

[CarolMS]

When it comes to being a money-making author, I have to wonder what keeps romance writer Danielle Steele producing novel after novel. Having sold her first novel at 19 (1974?), she now is said to have written close to 200 novels and earned more than $420 Million! And she supposedly does so using two Olympia typewriters as old as me--and that's old!--and apparently working around 20 hours a day and on as many as five projects at once! They say she doesn't use a ghostwriter, but it makes one wonder. She must be some kind of machine.

Take a look at her San Francisco home, the Spreckels Mansion, below (one photo from 1959, and the other more recent and showing "Danielle Steel's bush," as the locals unaffectionately call it, which she added after purchasing the home for god-knows-how-many millions). She also lives much of her time in Paris (where she was a child).

(1) The Spreckels Mansion in 1959 (2) More recently, hidden by Danielle Steel's "bush"

This Pacific Heights mansion, by the way, features in some scenes in my novel-in-progress, and I actually lived in an 1889 Queen Anne Victorian-style house just around the corner for several years (sharing the spacious top floor with a roommate; my landlord, who lived on the bottom two floors with his family, was the son of once-Vice President as well as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson). Anyway, thought I'd share these photos, too, for the fun of it.