A few words on James Patterson

James Patterson, an American writer, is popular for making an empire with his thriller novels. In his career, the New York Times had listed him - the top bestseller for 35 times. Most of the people rate him as the best selling author all over the world. Though he is popular for his action novels but he has also written few non fictional books and some romantic novels. Patterson worked in the advertising agency before he began writing.

In 1976, James Patterson’s first book, the Thomas Berryman number, fetched him the Edgar award as best mystery writer. Many of his novels come in the form of crime thriller series (like the Alex Cross series) though most of his novels are stand-alone thrillers. Patterson has written over 65 books but most of his latest books are written by co-authors or ghost writers whose name appear on the cover of the books. As a lone writer, Patterson holds the record for having the most number of best selling titles for fictional writing. He has either been nominated or has won every top fiction prize including the Mystery Guild’s thriller of the year as well as the Children's Choice Book Award given to the best children's author of the year.

Patterson is the first author to be listed as number one children's author as well as the number one adult author on the New York Times list. He has a grand total of 56 best-selling titles to his name.

As stated, most of his books were co-written with other writers. Patterson usually writes the plot outline, sends it to the writers and then he receives the first draft. After making the necessary changes in the draft, it is sent back to the author for completion. The bulk of the writing work is carried out by the co-authors but it is always Patterson’s story. Some authors like Maxine Paetro and Andrew Gross who have worked with Patterson have become quite popular in their own right. Patterson has worked out a publishing deal which will see the author publish 11 books for children and adults in the year 2012. His compensation is estimated to be in excess 150 million dollars. Holy smoke!

His empire now publishes so many titles in one year that it can be tough to follow all the releases. For this reason The Bookshop Blog has put together a list list of all of James Patterson's books in chronological order.

In 2005, James Patterson started the Page Turner awards that gives away nearly 1 million dollars to any person or organization who creates a new way to spread the enjoyment of reading and of books.