Week 7 Prompt- Author Mills

Author Mills, I am looking at you James Patterson, are one of my biggest pet peeves as a librarian, and there are certainly many of them. Although, the annoyance with these types of authors began long before my library career.

I have the utmost respect for authors that can write and publish multiple books in a year. I recognize the effort that goes in to not only establishing yourself as a writer, but also keeping yourself relevant and publishing in a timeline that will keep your name on the shelves. What bothers me about the publishing industry, is the fact that debut authors have a hard time getting their name out there, no matter the quality and merit of their writing. On the contrary, established authors (author mills) will get a positive review of just about anything that they write no matter how formulaic it is. I have tried authors that pump out books left and right, and more often than not, I feel as if I am reading the same book with only the slightest changes made to the story line. The fact that these novels continue to sell and be highly rated speaks more to our society’s tendency to want the known and to ignore the unknown rather than quality. There are fantastic new authors out there trying to break these molds of the same storyline repeatedly, yet they rarely get recognition without some type of endorsement.

A pet peeve perhaps bigger than ignoring new and upcoming authors in favor of established authors, however, is when established authors will co-write with lesser known or just starting out authors. While this might sell the book, most readers just see the established author’s name. For example, with James Patterson, his name is always larger than the title, and then in smaller, barely noticeable print is the co-author’s name. I have spoken with several authors, at ILF, that have co-authored books with Patterson, and they have explicitly said that they are the ones actually writing and Patterson simply edits and revises. Yet he still gets a majority of the credit!

Past the more obvious lack of new author recognition, there is also the consideration of the library. In my own library, we have 100+ authors that are on automatic order, which helps me keep my collection development current when authors put out new books. However, this often leads to multiple copies of books by authors such as James Patterson, Clive Cussler, Nora Roberts, Debbie Macomber, David Baldacci, John Grisham, etc. In my own library, these authors have a very specific following of patrons, and once each of these patrons have read the new books; they proceed to the shelf to sit there until I finally deem them able to be weeded. For authors that publish 100+ book in their lifetime, this is a massive amount of shelf space taken by a single author, especially for a smaller library like mine. I cannot help but believe that not only the money spent, but also the shelf space, could be used on authors that are not author mills. Nevertheless, the ultimate question is how do we convince the patrons that are diehard fans of these authors to branch out?