Author, Inc.

I found this NYT article about James Patterson fascinating: the story of this author’s spectacularly successful career, from the struggle to get published in the 1970s, when he sold 10,000 copies of his first book, to today (last year he sold 14 million, outselling Stephen King, John Grisham, and Dan Brown). It also shows how, depressingly, the publishing industry has changed: “Thirty years ago, the industry defined a ‘hit’ novel as a book that sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in hardcover. Today a book isn’t considered a blockbuster unless it sells at least one million copies.” (No pressure, writers.)

The article offers a little background on the history of the blockbuster, pointing out that Patterson is not only a beneficiary but a catalyst (he’s described in the piece as “Little, Brown’s most prized possession”). These days, bestselling authors are not writers — they’re brands. (And, like a handful of other bestselling authors, Patterson doesn’t write his books himself but with a series of co-authors.)

The piece reminded me of something a writer friend of mine recently heard at a conference: a literary agent, when asked what she was looking for in an author, replied, “A franchise.” For most writers, this isn’t great news.

But as always, I try to look for the silver lining. As the article notes, “Patterson built his fan following methodically … like a politician aspiring to higher office, he was shoring up his base.” He also discovered the joys of reading later in life than many writers and blew off a chance to go to graduate school. And yes, his first book was rejected more than a dozen times.

I got a kick out of the story’s glimpse into Patterson’s book tour — he calls a gathering of 300+ people “a fairly respectable crowd” — and it shows well the bond between author and reader, no matter the genre (or brand, as the case may be). Of his own work, Patterson says, “this is not high art,” but his devoted fans don’t mind: the woman who read his books with her grandmother and wanted to bury a signed copy with her; the trucker who has listened to every book while on the road.

A writer can’t have everything — and in Patterson’s case, it’s the love of critics (the Daily Beast’s William Boot calls Patterson’s detective Alex Cross “a moron”). But as Patterson tells the Times, his readers are happy: “So what’s the big deal?”