James Patterson Meet the Author

that! On Meet The Author Rebecca Jones speaks to the bestselling

writer James Patterson. He plans to transform reading habits.

James Patterson is the worlds biggest selling author. He is

best-known for his thrillers but has written science fiction, novels for

young people, romance and nonfiction. To date he has published

over 140 books selling more than 350 million copies around the world. And

she is the most borrowed author at UK libraries. That isn't enough for

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

he thinks have abandoned reading. And his solution is called book

shops. -- BookShots. So, welcome James Patterson. What

are BookShots? Hopefully a revolution in reading and the way we

look at books, at the least and evolution, under 150 pages,

relatively inexpensive and hopefully impossible to put down. It is one of

my regular books except at 145 pages, very tight. You can get on

the train, go to work, go home and you have read one, you have

accomplished something which is cool. The slogan is all thriller, no

filler. What makes you think someone will pick up one of these rather

than a magazine? Books are like reading a movie. There is no fact.

It is all story, hopefully with good characters. If you like Alex Cross,

here is when you have not read before but it happened so quickly.

In England we will start with six, it is a category, and Alex Cross, a

zoo, one about the Royals which is kind of fun, one about a big heist,

a diamond heist. Recently I was interviewed and I pulled out these

eight very deep drawers and I have 107 of these book shops that finish

now or in process -- what-macro. 80 of them are stories that I created.

It is like, oh my God. The people interview me when like this, this is

insane and I said great, insane. But for readers this is going to be a

boon. Because they are addictive. You have written some of them but

like your full-length novel, you employ a team of co-writers, tell us

a bit about how that works, in practice? I wrote last year over

2000 pages of outlines and they threw for drafts. It is an insane

amount of writing. And usually when I want to co-write a book, I write

an outline, for these it may be 30 pages and it is chapter by chapter.

And what I will do with the co-writer is given the outline, I

will say please contribute to the outline because that is useful and

it gets the co-writer feeling involved in the process. The

template for the book shops -- BookShots is every single chapter

moves both the characterisation and the story forward and turns on the

movie project in our heads so if that isn't happening, meaning you

cannot see and feel and taste and smell it, if it is not moving

forward and I'm not interested characters I will say, hold on, we

have lost something. Then I will make suggestions and occasionally I

did not do the outline correctly or the co-writer...! We will correct.

If you look at them, they are smaller and thinner and hopefully on

the trains and planes you will see people reading this smaller book. I

have read that you work seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year, is that

true, do not take Christmas day of? Christmas I would cite would be a

light day but generally it is seven days a week. Somebody said you are

lucky if you find something you like to do and it is a miracle people pay

you to do it. And that is situation. Doing these BookShots, it has been

the most fun year of my life because I love to tell stories and I was

blocked with books I had because I had the Alex Cross and woman's

murder club and we do not need any more hardback, there was no place

for me to let my imagination go and now there is. I would have more

content by the end of this year. It is little wonder that you are known

as the busiest man in publishing not just because of the number of books

you bite but because of the time and the money you spend on championing

literacy, why is that so important? For me, the most important thing is

getting kids reading. Because if our kids do not become competent

readers, especially kids at risk, how they get jobs and go to school?

If they get through, ten and 11 and they are not competent it...

There'll be a drag on society and the city and all of us and it will

make for a harder life for them and the thing about... As individuals I

can't do much to solve global warming or health care crisis but as

an individual we can all get the kids in our homes reading mostly, we

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

are a big issue now and how they get funded in England. I just hope that

people will stand up and say, the libraries are importance of need the

money for libraries. How much does your interest in this stem from the

fact you had a son who was a reluctant reader? Well, he is a

bright sky, when he was eight that summer we said you can read every

day and he said do I have to do and we said yes unless you want to live

in the garage because we read in the house. But we said this is going to

be painless, will buy books you like so we've got a dozen books on Percy

Jackson and one of mine and by the end of the summer Jack had read a

dozen books and is reading skills went up dramatically and ultimately

they have SAT scores in America so a perfect score in reading is 800 and

T had 800 and is going to an Ivy League college. In terms of what can

happen, if you take charge with your children, make it your

responsibility. There was nothing more important that a mother or

father or grandparents do than make sure the kids read. It is good you

get them out with exercise but they have to be able to read. You are

hugely successful, a writer of commercial fiction, do you hanker

after writing the great American novel? I Hafal birdie but they are

commercial! No, I love what I do -- I have all ready. I want people to

say James kept people up late at night and BookShots revolution. This

is going to change the way people breed. Great to talk to. Thank you.

-- the way people