How James Patterson Helped Reinvent Publishing

James Patterson has n’t always write science fantasy or illusion , apart from his recent young - grownup serial publication . But he ’s radically changed the whole publication industry , and especially the way that genre fiction is handle , over the preceding two 10 . The New York Times has a fascinating look at “ Patterson , Inc. ”

And it ’s probably no conjunction that the mid-1990s , when Patterson started his push in earnest , was around the same time that you started to hear genre source bemoan that there was no longer a place for the “ midlist ” author , the mortal whose books sold tens of thou of copy rather than hundreds of thousands .

The Times article gives a moderately respectable summary of how publishing has alter over the past few decennium :

Starship Test 9

The report of the megahit ’s burst is , paradoxically , obligate up with that of publish ’s late trouble . They each began with the wave of integration that tangle through the industriousness in the 1980s . Unsatisfied with publishing ’s pocket-size margins , the newfangled conglomerates that now owned the various publishing houses pressed for bigger good sellers and big profits . aggregate - market fable had historically been a paper-back book byplay , but publishing house now put more free energy and resources into selling these same Holy Scripture as hardcovers , with their vastly more golden profit margins . At the same metre , large stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders were elbowing out self-governing booksellers . Their growing ascendance of the market chip in them the leverage to demand wholesale discounts and charge hefty center for friendly store positioning , force publishers to sell still more books . liberal - box storage like Costco accelerated the trend by stocking large quantities of book by a small chemical group of generator and offering steep discount rate on them . Under pressure from both their parent party and bookseller , publishing house became less and less willing to gamble on undiscovered endowment and more disposed to lay away their resource for their most bankable source . The effect was ego - carry through . The few books that newspaper publisher adorn heavily in sold ; most of the rest did n’t . And the blockbuster became even bigger .

And there ’s a telling quote from the former CEO of the Time Warner Book Group , Larry Kirshbaum , who says the publishing industry had always resisted “ the thought that you could mass - product author , ” until Patterson came along . Of course , other authors — like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling — had a lot to do with it as well . But it ’s super interesting to get a window into the outlook that determine the world we inhabit in now .

Edited to sum up : I did n’t realize the Times article was from 2010 at first , because it was link to on SFSignal as if it were a novel article . ( I also did not take in that SFSignal ’s linkpost was also linking to a unexampled ranting about the 2010 article at first . They appear to be just one tie , to the Times piece . My badness . Sorry about that . )

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