The whole world can breathe a sigh of relief.

At no time will we lack for glossy new triple-spaced and massive-margined* James Patterson books.  He just signed a 17-book deal with Hatchette.  That'll keep him there through 2012.

Seventeen books in three years.  Seriously.

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*A (hilariously grumpy) little old lady came in yesterday and donated his new book.  She was mad she'd spend $25 on a book that had, like, 23 words on each page.  (She didn't say "like", though.)

Comments

[Kelly Fineman]

That ought to keep a lot of people employed, since he doesn't write most of his own books anyhow. He just spews out ideas and lets other folks write them. Or so I've heard.

[LG]

I'd heard that about Patterson as well - it's kind of like the ghostwriters who churned (churn?) out the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. I guess what we heard must be true, though, because there's no possible way someone could write 17 books in 3 years unless other writers were involved, the books were REALLY short, or someone took a couple actual books and played cut-and-paste with them at least 15 times...

[Leila]

Well, a lot of his books are "co-written", which, according to an article I read a while back (or at least how I remember it), means that the co-author does the majority of the writing and then Patterson tweaks it. Or something like that.

Basically, it didn't really sound like co-authoring to me. (Or what I think of as co-authoring.) It sounded more like that the covers of those books should read 'EDITED by James Patterson'.

[LG]

"Edited by" may be more accurate, but it's certainly less sparkly. Also, as a cataloger, I chuckle at the thought of what that would do to the library records for his books - Patterson's name would never again be listed first in most library displays. The horror!