Along Came a Lot of Money to Invest - James Patterson’s!
This is a fascinating article, well worth reading in its entirety as a glimpse into the craft and the business of writing the best-sellers that are presented to today’s book-lovers.
Along Came a Lot of Money to Invest - New York Times:
Mr. Patterson said he often worked with co-authors because he believed that he was more proficient at creating the story line than at executing it.“I found that it is rare that you get a craftsman and an idea person in the same body,” Mr. Patterson said. “With me, I struggle like crazy. I can do the craft at an acceptable level, but the ideas are what I like.” He said the co-authors received a flat fee and, most often, credit on the book cover.
Mr. Manning, who worked with Mr. Patterson at J. Walter Thompson for more than 20 years, said that there was a parallel between Mr. Patterson’s book career and his work in advertising. “He is the leader of a creative team, which is similar to what he did as a creative director where he came up with what an advertising campaign needed to accomplish,” he said. “Then the team executed it and he evaluated it.”
In novel writing, as in advertising, Mr. Patterson wants the final say. Once there is a first draft of a book that has a co-author, “I may ask the collaborator for a polish,” he said.
“Then I do the remaining rewrites,” he added - sometimes as many as seven.
and:
He has become so successful in publishing that the Harvard Business School has used him as a case study in brand management. In marketing that brand, he is ferociously competitive. He agreed to pay half the salary of a brand manager at Little Brown & Company, his publisher, who does nothing but track the marketing and releases of Mr. Patterson’s hardcover books to avoid conflicts with his paperbacks and new releases from other top authors.Mr. Patterson designed the cover for “Along Came a Spider,” his first best seller, in 1993, and has done so for every book since, with oversize lettering that a browser cannot miss. And he works with a branding and advertising company called the Concept Farm that produces his TV commercials. Its owners once worked for him at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.
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