JONATHON STURGEON | FLAVORWIRE
This is how the world’s best-selling novelist sells more books.
Since March, we’ve heard about a forthcoming publishing venture from James Patterson, the best-selling novelist of the age. “To date,” writes the New York Times, “[Patterson] has published 156 books that have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide.” Or, rather, he relies on a stable of more than twenty co-authors to churn out his novels in what appears to be a tightly orchestrated Fordist scheme. BookShots, his new imprint with Hachette, will accelerate this output by producing short, plot-heavy, “cinematic” novellas. No fewer than twenty-three of these “shots” will be sprayed on readers throughout the remainder of 2016. And the spraying began last Monday.
According to the New Yorker, each “BookShot” will run between twenty-five to thirty thousand words (around 150 pages), and, as the imprint’s site explains, each will feature recurring “characters,” including “favorites like Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, and the Women’s Murder Club.” For now, the novellas will come as either romances or thrillers. And, in keeping with the imprint’s ethos — “Read Anywhere, Anytime” (was this a problem before?) — they will be available in print and by way of a stand-alone phone app. >>READ MORE
