James Patterson
James Patterson
James Brendan Pattersonis an American author. He is largely known for his novels about fictional psychologist Alex Cross, the protagonist of the Alex Cross series. Patterson also wrote the Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch and Wizard series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels. His books have sold more than 300 million copies and he holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person to sell 1 million e-books...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth22 March 1947
CityNewburgh, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Schools and parents can team up to find books that kids will really get excited about - that will make them say, 'That was a great experience. Now I know why people get excited about reading.'
The fact is that our kids aren't reading books - or frankly, much of anything lately. Schools are under funded, some schools even closing their libraries. Parents have to realize that it's their job, and not the school's job, to get kids into the habit of reading for fun.
With my adult books, for the first six weeks or so, it's about 60 percent ebooks in terms of sales. The kids' books, it's like 5 percent. Which means that the parents, the ones that aren't going into stores now, they're no longer buying books for their kids, which is not great.
Commercial books don't even get covered. The reason why so many book reviews go out of business is because they cover a lot of stuff that nobody cares about. Imagine if the movie pages covered none of the big movies and all they covered were movies that you couldn't even find in the theater?
I always figured there would be a kid audience and an adult audience, and there is. That's true for 'Hunger Games' and 'Twilight' and 'Harry Potter.' And 'Maximum Ride,' for sure. In particular what happens is a lot of parents share the books with their kids, and the mom has read it, and the kids, and they talk about it.
As we go through this transition where a lot more people will be reading on devices, nobody is paying enough attention to make sure it's a smooth transition. I believe we still need places where people can go to handle, hold and talk about books, get information about what books are out there, and so on.
This is what I believe is most important: getting good books into the hands of kids - books that will make them want to say, 'Wow, that was great. Give me another one to read.'
Kids say the No. 1 reason they don't read more is that they can't find books they like. Freedom of choice is a key to getting them motivated and excited.
I do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car.
When you go out to Hollywood, it's like, "Here's the book. It is what it is. It'll always stay the same."
I love movies and I like a lot of good television. At the end of the project, I don't care if they changed [it from the book], I just want to look at it and go, "I loved that. That really turned out well."
I'm going to introduce BookShots, which are these under-150-page books that I'm launching, and they're under $5. They just launched in Australia. I already had a ton of content, but now add 50 books a year of content.
They're afraid of change, and we must change. They're afraid of the young, and we are the young. They're afraid of music, and music is our life. They're afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas. They're most afraid of our magic.
The best way to get kids reading more is to give them books that they'll gobble up - and that will make them ask for another.