How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author • Hacker News Board

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#51

Post by cs137 » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

richardatlarge wrote: post #42

dmitriid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unexplained phenomenon. I know of a Russian author, Dontsova [1] that is the same: hundreds of shitty detective novels, immensely popular. [1] A wikipedia article, as badly written as the books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darya_Dontsova?wprov=sfti1

Maybe it’s best understood like a Big Mac. One crappy burger after another, eaten for eternity because they are reliably average. There’s money to be made as a serial provider of homogeneous sustenance

It's the exploit/explore tradeoff. In the cultural industries, most consumers (the majority of whom don't care to be more than that) prefer to exploit--that is, read or watch or listen to something very similar to what they already have--than explore.

We think readers should be a smarter crowd--and, thus, more upscale in their choices--than TV watchers and popular music listeners (as both groups comprise, roughly, the general population). This is possibly the case, but it seems to be cancelled out by the massive time investment involved in seriously reading a book: eight hours for a typical novel, as opposed to an hour for a TV show or 3 minutes for a pop song. The high cost of exploration means that the book world has the same problem and, unfortunately, the processes and people who are trusted to filter for quality, quite frankly, don't. Traditional publishers follow the market and "book buzz" is built from the opinions of highly influential non-readers.

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#52

Post by bell-cot » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #37

shp0ngle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mao has the “Little Red Book”, I think that one is the most popular book in the world after Bible.

In fairness it's easy to have a best seller if you just shoot the people who won't read it

But it is far, far easier to become a bestselling author than it is to become the dictator of a large country - which is kinda a prerequisite for the "or we'll shoot you" strategy.

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#53

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 10:05 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #44

jsmith99 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite traditional. Alexander Dumas used ghostwriters to produce a comparable number of books and many old master artists had entire workshops of apprentices producing art in their name. George Orwell published an essay claiming that the serial school stories then being published (Billy Bunter) were written in such a artificial tone that they were obviously being produced by a series of jobbing writers, provoking…

I feel like this is quite big omission in way we talk about past writers. It is pretty major difference against actually writing that much.

We constantly talk about whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, don't we?

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#54

Post by huijzer » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

cs137 wrote: post #47

quickthrower2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine. It makes him a 'unicorn' in software business parlance.

I would say that it's bad for writing, though. Ultimately, what he's doing exacerbates the absurdly lopsided distribution of visibility and rewards that writers experience. Most books sell horribly, and not for reasons of low quality but because discoverability is a huge problem, even in today's world of recommendation algorithms and the like. There are a good number of "famous" writers who live in poverty, because t…

> You can self-publish, but less than 1% of the population has the savings and free time to do it right. It costs $10,000, minimum--you'll have to hire an editor, a cover designer, a formatter...

We wrote https://juliadatascience.io in a few months and have about 4k unique visitors per month (https://juliadatascience.pirsch.io/). The cover is designed for free by ourselves via a plotting library. Yes, we’re not selling millions but we have spent only 60 dollars (on the domain name).

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#55

Post by jgalt212 » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 10:40 AM UTC

hmate9 wrote: post #15

For those unfamiliar: His books are quite generic but provide some fun for the casual reader. He has released over 200 books and sold over 400 million copies. He uses a team of ghostwriters to actually develop the books/series after he gives the detailed outlines of the characters and the stories. His success is mainly how he has been able to scale up and release so many books with his name attached.

like Jeff Koons, but in print.

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#56

Post by wafriedemann » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

I read two or three books of his when I was in school to improve my english. I found him on the NYT best seller's list, where he seems to be a constant. You could argue that at some point this becomes self sustaining, but then again, there aren't many with a track record this consistent.

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#57

Post by michaelt » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 10:46 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #12

bwb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried one last year, worst book i have read in 10 years. I have no idea why they are popular. They are all written by ghost writers i think.

It's an unexplained phenomenon. I know of a Russian author, Dontsova [1] that is the same: hundreds of shitty detective novels, immensely popular. [1] A wikipedia article, as badly written as the books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darya_Dontsova?wprov=sfti1

The target market probably doesn't see it as shitty or uninnovative, but rather as the next instalment with their beloved series/characters/author.

The people who go to Marvel movies aren't looking for fresh new superheros, or an challenging new format where Batman explores the true root causes of crime in society.

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#58

Post by browie » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 11:17 AM UTC

huijzer wrote: post #54

cs137 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that it's bad for writing, though. Ultimately, what he's doing exacerbates the absurdly lopsided distribution of visibility and rewards that writers experience. Most books sell horribly, and not for reasons of low quality but because discoverability is a huge problem, even in today's world of recommendation algorithms and the like. There are a good number of "famous" writers who live in poverty, because t…

> You can self-publish, but less than 1% of the population has the savings and free time to do it right. It costs $10,000, minimum--you'll have to hire an editor, a cover designer, a formatter... We wrote https://juliadatascience.io in a few months and have about 4k unique visitors per month ( https://juliadatascience.pirsch.io/ ). The cover is designed for free by ourselves via a plotting library. Yes, we’re not sel…

I'm in the process of doing this free for someone I know. I got into it clueless to how any of this works and what it may cost. Reading you post $10,000 minimum and researching a few days ago on how much book editors get paid (and exactly how) slightly shocked me!

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#59

Post by watwut » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 11:24 AM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #53

watwut wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is quite big omission in way we talk about past writers. It is pretty major difference against actually writing that much.

We constantly talk about whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, don't we?

I don't and my school did not. This info was not in in booklets about plays I have seen either.

I have seen that one mentioned couple of times on HN, not elsewhere. Through, I dont care about Shakespeare at all and never discuss him. HN is pretty much only community where Shakespeare gets mentioned frequently (for me for mysterious reasons).

Re: How James Patterson became the world’s best-selling author

#60

Post by cs137 » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 12:10 PM UTC

huijzer wrote: post #54

cs137 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that it's bad for writing, though. Ultimately, what he's doing exacerbates the absurdly lopsided distribution of visibility and rewards that writers experience. Most books sell horribly, and not for reasons of low quality but because discoverability is a huge problem, even in today's world of recommendation algorithms and the like. There are a good number of "famous" writers who live in poverty, because t…

> You can self-publish, but less than 1% of the population has the savings and free time to do it right. It costs $10,000, minimum--you'll have to hire an editor, a cover designer, a formatter... We wrote https://juliadatascience.io in a few months and have about 4k unique visitors per month ( https://juliadatascience.pirsch.io/ ). The cover is designed for free by ourselves via a plotting library. Yes, we’re not sel…

First of all, congrats. Writing a book is difficult, and writing one that people actually enjoy reading, even more so.

Second, trade and technical publishing are completely different markets. You need a literary agent to even sit at the table in trade (or traditional) publishing. You also have no chance in hell of getting one ("querying" is a waste of time) if you don't have preexisting connections or have a trendy "hook".

Plus, the objective functions are different. If you write a technical book that only sells 10 copies per month (I'm assuming 0.25% of visitors buy, although that might be on the high side) but it improves your career, you win.

Fiction authors, on the other hand, are trying to make enough in royalties to live on. You'll get about $3 per copy in royalties. You need to be targeting a large audience to even have a chance. Large audiences mean lots of competition; other people out there can hire publicists or somehow have the connections ("querying" agents is a waste of time) to make it in trad-pub (which is deeply flawed, but they can sell books when they get their shit together). If you sell less than 1000 copies, you're done--for good. Your name now has negative value, but no publisher (or agent) is going to touch an anonymous pen name (no platform, no photo with the family and the dog) either.

In traditional publishing, you have to make it a full-time job or you will be flushed out of the system (but they don't tell you that). Most of the time isn't spent on the writing (as the quality of much of what's produced these days shows) but marketing. Your "advance" is basically your marketing budget--they can't force you, but "eating" your advance instead of spending it to market your book (the publishing house won't) is frowned upon.

In self-publishing, there are no rules, but it seems that the successful self-publishers, on average, spend even more time on self-promotion, which writers famously dislike doing.