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I’ve never read any Patterson books. Anyone have a recommendation of a single one to read to get a feel for what makes him a best seller?

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I think it's not so much a single book, but that he writes long series of them with well developed characters that bridge across them. There is one series (Alex Cross) I'm listening to on audio book now that has at least 29 books in it.

None of them are super great but its like comfort food ... you finish one and the familiar characters are all there when you go back for the next. So this is the secret to have people buying huge numbers of books ... you always want the next one in the series.

Mind you, I borrow these for background listening / when I go to sleep at night. I would never spend the time on them as a focused activity.

I tried one last year, worst book i have read in 10 years. I have no idea why they are popular. They are all written by ghost writers i think.

FTA: "Patterson supplies detailed outlines for his books. His co-writers then flesh out these narrative skeletons into installments of popular series"

He has scaled up thrillers like a startup. Hence his personal wealth is crazy.

It's an unexplained phenomenon. I know of a Russian author, Dontsova [1] that is the same: hundreds of shitty detective novels, immensely popular.

[1] A wikipedia article, as badly written as the books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darya_Dontsova?wprov=sfti1

Maybe it’s best understood like a Big Mac. One crappy burger after another, eaten for eternity because they are reliably average. There’s money to be made as a serial provider of homogeneous sustenance

It's the exploit/explore tradeoff. In the cultural industries, most consumers (the majority of whom don't care to be more than that) prefer to exploit--that is, read or watch or listen to something very similar to what they already have--than explore.

We think readers should be a smarter crowd--and, thus, more upscale in their choices--than TV watchers and popular music listeners (as both groups comprise, roughly, the general population). This is possibly the case, but it seems to be cancelled out by the massive time investment involved in seriously reading a book: eight hours for a typical novel, as opposed to an hour for a TV show or 3 minutes for a pop song. The high cost of exploration means that the book world has the same problem and, unfortunately, the processes and people who are trusted to filter for quality, quite frankly, don't. Traditional publishers follow the market and "book buzz" is built from the opinions of highly influential non-readers.

The target market probably doesn't see it as shitty or uninnovative, but rather as the next instalment with their beloved series/characters/author.

The people who go to Marvel movies aren't looking for fresh new superheros, or an challenging new format where Batman explores the true root causes of crime in society.

Read the first "Alex Cross" book.

It's...not very good, but it's a pretty good example of Patterson's work. I read the first 3-4 books in the Alex Cross series, but gave up after finding no growth or improvement on the character or the author.

I think you'll find his popularity similar to what makes lots of other things popular. His books are rather bland, but not quite boring. He doesn't pack a lot of exposition between the action so the plot moves forward. Unfortunately this often makes the characters seem quite stupid as they rush to action rather than ponder the situation. I find this unrealistic and annoying, especially given Alex Cross's profession.

Obviously, I'm not a fan.

Along Came a Spider if you like crime books. It's pretty decent. There's a movie with Morgan Freeman if you'd prefer to go that route.

Short sentences.

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