Author Spotlight Week 5
James Patterson
James Patterson is an American suspense/thriller novelist. I feel like he's all over the place these days - you might have seen him on commercials advertising his latest books for adults and children alike. He is best known for the Alex Cross, Women's Murder Club and the Michael Bennett series' for adults and the Maximum Ride, Daniel X and the Witch and Wizard series' for children/teenagers. He is also known for many other stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels. James Patterson has over 300 million copies and also holds the Guiness World Record for being the first person to sell 1 million e-books. He has written 95 books and has had 19 consecutive No. 1 New York Times bestselling novels and holds The New York Times record for most bestselling hardcover fiction titles by a single author with 76. His novels account for 1 in 17 of all hardcover novels sold in the US and in recent years, his novels have sold more copies than those of Stephen King, John Grisham and Dan Brown combined. James Patterson works with a variety of co-authors and has often said the collaborating with others brings new and interesting ideas to his stories.
In addition to his writing, James is also known in his efforts to get children reading. He started a website named, ReadKiddoRead, to help parents, librarians and teachers find the best books for children. Coming with being well known, he has been criticized quite a bit for various reasons, but I'm only going to focus on one. In recent years, he took an ad out (and a commercial too, if I recall) in the New York Times Book Review and Publisher's Weekly in an attempt to save books, bookstores and libraries. As most people know, more and more books are published as e-books and can be purchased on Amazon Google for the Nook, Kindle, and tablets. James was resistant to that and on a level, I can understand why he was. More on that in a minute. So the purpose of the ad was to get more people to buy actual books. The actual ad is as follows:
"Who Will Save Our Books? Our Bookstores? Our Libraries?"
"If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature? Who will discover and mentor new writers? Who will publish our important books? What will happen if there are no more books like these?"
All rights go to their respective owners including The New York Times Book Review, Publisher's Weekly and salon.com.
As an aspiring writer myself, I think it's harder than ever to get published today. So many new authors start publishing their stories as e-books, which is a lot easier to do, but I also think it's harder to promote yourself and your work that way. On the other hand, it's also hard to find a good publisher who will actually publish your stories, especially if you're like me and want to write for children. James Patterson has a point. If there comes a day when there's no more bookstores and libraries, there won't be any publishers either since all books would be online/e-books. For me personally, I like to go to a bookstore and select books out that I want to read more than downloading books on my kindle/tablet - although that comes in handy for travelling. I also like to actually hold/feel a book in my hands and such.
Links:
James also has a facebook and twitter page under his name.
I am going to end this in a question. What do you prefer - reading an actual book or reading a book on a device like a nook/kindle/tablet? Please comment down below.
Meg
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