James Patterson

James Patterson is one of the world’s most prolific and popular fiction writers, thanks to a fast-paced style and genre-spanning oeuvre, his collaboration (by fax!) with coauthors, and the marketing savvy he acquired as an ad executive. How does he make good on a four-year, 26-book deal while experiencing “zero stress”? By thinking efficiently yet creatively and trusting his gut. Interviewed by Alison Beard Photography: Brian Smith HBR: You collaborate with coauthors on most of your novels. Explain how that works. Patterson: It isn’t terribly groundbreaking: It’s been done a lot. The newspaper business, the movie business—they’re full of teams. A lot of art was done by teams, a lot of cathedrals…. I’ll write an elaborate outline, maybe 70 pages, very detailed, clear, and focused. The coauthor will write the first draft, and I’ll see the work every few weeks. I’ll do two to seven more drafts. I’m very easy to work with. I don’t do a lot of silly nitpicking. The job pays well. Everybody likes it. Nobody quits. It sounds like you’re more boss than colleague? I think it’s a combination. I remember at J. Walter Thompson it was a fairly collegial atmosphere, but there was an understanding that we didn’t join you, you joined us. I think it’s the same thing. They’re joining me. I don’t like to use the word “boss,” even though I don’t think it’s inaccurate, because I think I create an environment that is much easier than the ones most people have to deal with when they write for magazines, newspapers, and publishers. And, as I said, nobody leaves. Some people think that the way you write and market books has revolutionized the publishing industry. I didn’t go to Harvard Business School. I’ve taken no business courses. I’ve taken no marketing courses. But I’m a creative problem solver. Often those two things, the creative and the analytical, don’t exist in the same body, so there aren’t enough of those people in business. But I think they need to be very high up in companies. That’s probably the main reason for my success. I am very creative: I have 500 pages of ideas for books. I couldn’t possibly do them all myself. And I have coauthors, none of whom had been very successful at solving the problem of writing a novel that was going to (a) get published, and (b) be successful, whether it’s terrific reviews or the best-seller list. One of your publishers described you as having a golden gut. How did you develop that? I’ve been lower-middle-class, I’ve been middle-class, I’ve been well-to-do. I’ve lived in the South, I’ve lived in the Northeast. I’ve lived with all kinds of people. So I’ve been around. It’s also the right-brain, left-brain thing. For a long time we’ve over-rewarded the ability to retain information, to spit back other people’s theorems, and not paid as much attention to the ability to innovate and be imaginative. I have the ability to dream up things but also to step back and ask, Does anybody care? Is anybody going to be interested in this? Am I interested in it as a reader? Would my mother be interested? My sisters? Some guy sitting in a train terminal? Part of it is the advertising experience, which forces you to think about how people will react. But I think I went into that business with a gut that worked reasonably well. I just have a feeling for what’s going to stick to the wall, what’s going to move people. I remember one Southern colleague, very funny, who said, “If Patterson says a grasshopper can pull a plow, hitch up that little motherfucker.” You have many projects going at one time. How do you stay so productive? It’s very easy for me to multitask. I can go to another table and focus on something new and get right into it. I don’t exactly know why. I think I did it as a kid. I think I’ve done it all my life. If you go into my office right now, you’ll see stack and stacks of manuscripts. The day will be a combination of writing, rewriting, outlines, different voices. They’re all things I want to write, so that makes it easier. If you’re in a situation where you like two tasks and hate three, it’s hard to go back and forth. But I’m always doing something I want to do. I’m never in a position where I have to interview James Patterson even if I don’t want to interview James Patterson. Tell me about your transition from adman to author. I didn’t really have designs on a big advertising career. I was with a woman, and she developed a brain tumor. I was with her for seven years, and for two and a half years she was very sick. When she died it was totally heartbreaking. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t write books. I threw myself into advertising. I didn’t want to do that, either, but I had nowhere else to go. So it was an accident. Eventually I started writing, and a few years down the pike I said, “I want to try to write a best seller.” I’d learned my strengths as a writer—pace and writing in the first person. That’s where Along Came a Spider came from. But before that your first novel won a prestigious award for mystery writing. After being turned down by 31 publishers. How did you cope with the rejection? It happened fairly quickly, so it wasn’t as painful as it might have been, and some of the letters were quite nice. So you just kind of go, “Somebody liked it. Maybe somebody’s going to publish it.” You’ve faced criticism for your commercial style. It’s been an up-and-down thing. In the beginning the reviews were 95% positive. As I’ve gotten popular, they’ve become more of a mix, and there are a couple of people who really dislike what I do. But I think all my books hold up on the level of pretty good movies or TV shows. After reading Ulysses, I knew I couldn’t write anything that great. I don’t have it in me. Plus, the high-brow audience wasn’t interesting to me. Sometimes I dream of writing something more serious. But even if I wrote a really terrific book, I think I would still get a 50-50 split from the critics. So that’s one of the reservations: Some people will bang at me no matter what I do. How did you persuade publishers to be more creative about marketing your books? It was a very quick process. With Along Came a Spider, I said, “Why don’t you consider television?” And they just said flatly, “We don’t do that.” So I went and created a $2,000 commercial, very inexpensive. And I brought it back and they said, “Oh, we like that.” And that was it. And they took your advice from then on? Well, they do now. Initially it was a give-and-take. There’s always skepticism. But my gut is right a lot. And people who work with me come to realize that reluctantly. Was it risky to branch out from mysteries? My tendency in any business—publishing, advertising, Hollywood—is to seriously question the rules. The rules in publishing were: You don’t do TV ads, you don’t cross genres, you don’t put out two books in a year. And I said, “I don’t know if that makes sense.” The publishers looked at me as a mystery writer. But I felt that the connection I had with people came from writing books that are hard to put down, that get you emotionally involved with the main character. So I could write a romantic novel or something historical. I can’t help but ask you about technology and the advent of the eBook and what you think that means for publishing. Short term, the good side of it is people can really act on their impulses. You hear about a book, you can order it instantly. And so many kids love to read on screens now. The terrible thing is nobody has thought about what’s going to happen if there are no bookstores. That can’t be good. Has it changed anything about the way that you approach content? I’ve thought about some shorter content but I haven’t really done anything. I will tend not to go into things where there isn’t a habit established or a habit that I think can be established easily. Is it true you still don’t use a computer? I do use an iPad a bit, but that’s about it. I sent one email once. I get faxes. I have a wonderful assistant, and she will track me down if something is important. It gives me something to look forward to. I’ll become a techie in my dotage.

James Patterson

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