![\"James](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2016\/04\/James-Patterson-Books-300x260.jpg\")
<\/p>\nChristina Bagni \/\/ Blog Writer<\/p>\n
Stephen King, who sees himself as \u201cthe literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries,\u201d once called James Patterson \u201ca terrible writer, but very successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, it\u2019s fine to eat junk food and it\u2019s fine to read campy \u201ccommercial\u201d fiction like Patterson writes, but it\u2019s hard not to get annoyed at all the inconsistencies in his books. In Patterson\u2019s fiction, characters appear and disappear at random. Personalities, physical features, and ages change book to book. Characters take jobs they swore they never would the book prior, develop super powers that are later forgotten, and on occasion go on book-long tirades about global warming\u2026only to forget about it for the rest of the series. It\u2019s almost as if James Patterson doesn\u2019t care about the details, or at least doesn\u2019t expect his readers to care.<\/p>\n
Well\u2026he doesn\u2019t. Let me explain.<\/p>\n
Patterson is the author (or co-author\u2026or has slapped his name on the cover as if he was the author) of a whopping 156 books to date, all published within the last 40 years. That\u2019s 3.9 books a year on average.<\/p>\n
At the beginning, he wrote one book every year or so, with a few longer breaks, like a normal person. In fact, he only published
\nten books in his first 19 years, from \u201cThe Thomas Berryman Number\u201d in 1976 to \u201cKiss the Girls\u201d in 1995.<\/p>\n
1996 was when the strangeness began. He published three books in \u201996, and hasn\u2019t skipped a year since. In 2014, according to Jamespattersonbooklist.com<\/a>, he published 17 books. Seventeen books, in one year.<\/p>\n The Telegraph interviewed Patterson<\/a> about this in 2014, pointing out that at the time it had been 14,185 days since his first publication, since which he has published 45,651 pages. The article said that \u201csince 2002, just 20 percent of his novels have been entirely written by him.\u201d<\/p>\n The other 80 percent? As you probably know, James Patterson is infamous for using coauthors.<\/p>\n Basically, he gives various coauthors outlines and they write a few chapters at a time, with him heavily editing as they go. It\u2019s a symbiotic relationship\u2014Patterson gets books written, and the authors get an instant bestseller to put on their resume as well as royalties and usually their own book deal.<\/p>\n Mark Sullivan<\/a>, who co-authored 2012\u2019s \u201cPrivate Berlin\u201d with Patterson, said that it was like a \u201ccrash course\u201d in writing commercial fiction. He was told by Patterson that above all else, the book had to hold the attention of busy readers.<\/p>\n This explains Patterson\u2019s oft-critiqued super-short paragraphs, sometimes only half a page long. It also explains his lack of care for inaccuracies\u2014he\u2019s not writing for super fans who would notice that someone\u2019s hair color changes from brown with blonde streaks to strawberry blonde to black book to book, or who would roll their eyes at a character\u2019s second or third resurrection\/cloning. He\u2019s writing for the busy parent who\u2019s reading while waiting for soccer practice to be over, or for people to read on the subway, or while cooking. A big advocate for keeping reading relevant, Patterson realized adapting to this fast-paced, instant-gratification century was more successful than writing something more complex and \u201cliterary.\u201d<\/p>\n To be frank, he\u2019s not wrong. A constant bestselling author, he certainly makes more money than most authors of high fiction, and certainly publishes more books, even if he only writes two out of every ten words.<\/p>\n