Time’s Lev Grossman decides to jump on the bandwagon that is Patterson, Inc. — or namely, how he manages to write so many books a year. And as one co-writer, Andrew Gross, says, working with Patterson was a great education:
[Gross] used to run the sports-equipment company Head, but his dream was to write novels, and he couldn’t get any traction with publishers. One day he got a call: Patterson had seen his manuscript and wanted to have breakfast. “Basically what he said was, I’ve got a lot of stories to tell, and nobody has the resources to tell ’em all, and would I like to talk about a project with him?” That was the beginning of a seven-year partnership, a highly educational one for Gross–he jokes that it’s the equivalent of getting an M.F.A. and M.B.A. at the same time. Gross now has a three-book deal of his own.
But even though Patterson outsells almost everyone, he still wants respect. “That’s probably my biggest frustration,” he admits. “There’s something going on here that’s significant, and it’s not easy to do. If it was easy to do, a lot of people would do it.”