In what is likely the most exten­sive pro­file of author James Pat­ter­son I’ve read, we are bom­barded by a plethora of incred­i­ble sta­tis­tics: Pat­ter­son out­sells John Grisham, Stephen King and Dan Brown com­bined; he authored one in every 17 hard­back nov­els bought in the U.S. since 2006; and he has writ­ten 51 New York Times best­sellers to date (35 of which went to the num­ber one slot).

As the most bor­rowed author in Britain, Pat­ter­son appears to owe his suc­cess to two things: his back­ground as a collaboration-dependant adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive at J. Wal­ter Thomp­son and the increas­ingly risk-averse pub­lish­ing houses. On the former:

Pat­ter­son and his pub­lisher […] have an uncon­ven­tional rela­tion­ship. Despite [his] sup­port staff and his prodi­gious out­put, Pat­ter­son is inti­mately involved in the pub­li­ca­tion of his books. […] 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. […]

To main­tain his fre­netic pace of pro­duc­tion, Pat­ter­son now uses co-authors for nearly all of his books. He is part exec­u­tive pro­ducer, part head writer, set­ting out the vision for each book or series and then ensur­ing that his writ­ers stay the course. This kind of col­lab­o­ra­tion is sec­ond nature to Pat­ter­son from his adver­tis­ing days, and it’s cer­tainly com­mon in other cre­ative indus­tries, includ­ing tele­vi­sion. But writ­ing a novel is not the same thing. […] Books, at least in their tra­di­tional con­cep­tion, are the prod­uct of one person’s imag­i­na­tion and sen­si­bil­ity, ren­dered in a sin­gu­lar, unre­pro­ducible style and voice.

For the lat­ter, you can see the large para­graphs I would excerpt by search­ing for “The story of the blockbuster’s explo­sion” and “Barnes & Noble was caught in the cross­fire “.

I also enjoyed Patterson’s thoughts on writ­ing for an audience:

If you want to write for your­self, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you want to write for a lot of peo­ple, think about them a lit­tle bit. What do they like? What are their needs? A lot of peo­ple in this coun­try go through their days numb. They need to be enter­tained. They need to feel something.