James Patterson and the Art of the Holiday Bonus

Several NH Booksellers Will Have a Great Holiday!

I stumbled upon a very brief story from our local TV news organization the other day about James Patterson giving holiday bonuses to a variety of local bookstore booksellers.

Patterson, by the way, is the most successful author in the known (and probably unknown) universe, has written hundreds of books in all different genres (so many that even Wiki doesn’t have a conclusive total) and has, in his career, sold over 425 million copies of his books.

The numbers are staggering.

How has he done it? Well, by creating a co-author assembly line. Dozens of authors, some big names, some newcomers, contribute to his story mill. I saw a picture once of his story warehouse, hundreds of file cabinets, one for each co-author, full of ideas and proofs and so forth. He created an enormous writing factory and he’s the foreman.

Alex Cross is likely his most famous fictional character.

This creative method has received a lot of criticism from gatekeepers and jealous writers, but I don’t have issue with it. Wish I had thought of it actually.

Anyway, Patterson is a big fan of libraries and indy bookstores and he dumps a lot of cash in those directions - and not in a ‘buying readership’ sort of way. In other words, he’s not looking for book displays or reviews. He actually appears to understand that libraries and bookstores are important to writers. (Jeff Kinney is another writer who gets it.)

So, it was announced this week that eight booksellers in New Hampshire and hundreds across the country (25 in New York State alone) will receive holiday bonuses from Patterson, both as a thank you and incentive for a job well done.

Patterson asked for nominations and then pledged to hand out a $500 bonus to 600 booksellers around the country. Not bad at all!

Booksellers at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, Water Street Books in Exeter and Morgan Hill Bookstore in New London all received a gift, as did my hometown bookstore, The Bookery in Manchester, among others.

I haven’t written much about my early days in the bookselling biz. I managed a B. Dalton (not an indy store so I wouldn’t have been eligible) in Pennsylvania for a while. It wasn’t an easy job, and mostly thankless to be honest. So, to see the most famous writer in the solar system rewarding those that choose that life as a profession is heartening. (And yes, 300k to Patterson is like a hundred bucks to us, but he makes that effort and that’s cool.)

Anyway, I’ll post the brief TV News clips below. But the story did get me curious about bookstores and our readership here. Do any of you work at bookstores? Have you in the past? Tell us about your experiences!

Here’s the clip: Patterson Holiday Bonuses

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