Reporter Lauren A. E. Schuker of The Wall Street Journal interviews bestselling author James Patterson, who had 11 books released last year and has 13 coming out this year.
To date, the 65-year-old author has published 95 books and according to Nielsen ranks as the country’s top-selling author. Those numbers have added up to big business: Mr. Patterson earns more than $80 million a year, according to people familiar with his publishing empire.
Mr. Patterson works seven days a week out of a two-room office suite at his Palm Beach, FL oceanfront home. White bookshelves line the first room, where he does the bulk of his writing, all in pencil on white legal pads. There’s no computer; just a telephone, fax machine, an iPad, and a bag of bubble gum. The second room looks like a traditional bedroom, but the bed is covered by books, loose-leaf papers, and manuscripts.
When it comes to writing, he has a well-practiced system: he writes a detailed outline and then hires someone—often a former colleague from his advertising days — to write the ensuing scenes, usually in 30 to 40 page chunks. He will review those pages every few weeks, sometimes providing notes on them and other times re-writing them entirely.
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