James Patterson Meet the Author


James Patterson

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James Patterson is the world's biggest-selling author.

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He is best-known for his thrillers, but he's also written science

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fiction, novels for young people, romance and nonfiction.

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To date, he's published over 140 books, which have sold more

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than 350 million copies around the world.

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And he's also the most-borrowed author at UK libraries.

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But that's not enough for James Patterson,

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he now wants an even bigger audience, by selling books to people

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he thinks have abandoned reading, and his solution is called

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Hopefully, they are a revolution in reading

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At the least they are going to be an evolution.

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They are under 150 pages, relatively inexpensive,

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and hopefully impossible to put down.

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It's like one of my regular books on Alex Cross,

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except at, like, 145 pages, very tight.

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With a BookShot, you can get on the train, you can go to work,

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you get on the train and go home, and you've read one.

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So you've accomplished something, which is kind of cool.

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So the slogan is "all thriller, no filler", and is that what makes

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you think somebody will pick up one of these, rather than

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I mean, there's no fat, it's just all story,

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So if you like Alex Cross, here's an Alex Cross

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you haven't read before, but it just happened so quickly.

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Here in England we're going to start with six,

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so it's kind of a category of being Alex Cross,

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there will be a zoo, there's one about the Royals

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which is kind of fun, there's one about a big diamond heist.

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Recently I was interviewed in my office and I pulled out these

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eight very deep drawers, and I have 107 of these

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BookShots that are either finished now or in process.

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And of the 107, I would say 80 of them are stories that I created.

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In fact, the person interviewing me just went,

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like, "this is insane, this is crazy."

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But I think for readers, this is going to be a real boon,

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You've written some of them, but like your full-length novels,

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Just tell us a bit about how that actually works in practice.

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I wrote last year over 2000 pages of outlines.

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My outlines are always three or four drafts.

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So it's an insane amount of writing just that.

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And usually what I'll do when I co-write a book

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For these, the outline might be 30-something pages,

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and it just goes chapter, by chapter, by chapter.

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And what I will do with the co-writer is I'll

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give them the outline, I will say please contribute

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to the outline, because that's useful, and it gets the co-writer

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The template for the BookShots is that every single chapter moves

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both the characterisation and the story forward,

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and turns on the movie projector in our heads.

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So if that's not happening, meaning that you can't see it,

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you can't feel it, you can't taste it, you can't smell it,

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if it's not moving forward, if I'm not interested

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in the character, I will say, hold it.

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Occasionally it's that I didn't figure out the outline correctly,

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more often it's that the co-writer is, you know...

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If you look at them, they're smaller, obviously

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Hopefully on all the trains and the planes you'll see people

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I've read that you work seven days a week, 52 weeks

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Do you not even take a day off for Christmas Day?

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Christmas I would say would be a very light day.

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But generally it is seven days a week.

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Somebody said, you're lucky if you find something

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you like to do, and then it's a miracle if somebody

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With doing these BookShots, this has been the most

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Because I love to tell stories, and I was kind of blocked

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with the books that I had, because I had the Alex Cross series

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and the Women's Murder Club, and Private, and it's like,

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So there was no place for me to let my imagination

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I will have more content than Marvel by the end of this year.

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It's little wonder that you're known as the busiest man in publishing,

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not just because of the number of books you're writing,

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but also because of the time and the money that you spend

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For me, the most important thing is getting kids reading.

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Because, if our kids don't become at least competent readers,

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especially kids who are at risk, how are they going to get jobs, how

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If they get through, if they are 10 or 11 years

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old and are not competent, they are going to be

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a drag on the society, on the city, on all of us,

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and it's going to make for a much harder life for them.

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As individuals, I can't do much to solve global warming,

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But as an individual, we can all get the kids

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We can help the local school, we can help the local libraries.

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Libraries are a big issue right now, and how they get funded

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I just hope that people will stand up and go,

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our libraries are really important, so we need the money

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How much does your interest in this stem from the fact that you had

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When he was eight years old, that summer we said,

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We said, yes, unless you want to live in the garage.

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We said, this is going to be painless, we're going to go

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out and find books that you'll really like.

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So we went out and got a dozen books, we got him a Percy Jackson,

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By the end of the summer, Jack had read a dozen books,

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and his reading skills went up dramatically.

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Ultimately, they have SAT scores in America, so a perfect

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He's going to an Ivy League college next year.

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In terms of what can happen, if you take charge

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with your children, and make it your responsibility.

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There's nothing more important than a mother and father,

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grandparents too, making sure their kids read.

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It's good you get them out and they get some exercise,

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that's a positive, but they've got to be able to read.

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You are hugely successful, a writer of commercial mainstream fiction.

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Do you hanker after writing the great American novel?

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I have already, they're just commercial!

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I love what I do, I think it serves a purpose.

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On my gravestone, "James kept a lot of people up late at night."

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And BookShots are going to be one of the reasons.

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This is going to change the way people read.

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James Patterson, it's been great to talk to you, thanks so much.

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Happy New Year. There will be contrast in conditions to start the

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New Year with better weather in the north and wintry

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