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Post by beth on Aug 21, 2010 21:16:35 GMT -5
I'm not going to comment on this except to say that if James Patterson is making this kind of money for whatever it is he does ... each and every one of us should be able to make a living by writing. James Patterson tops list of highest earning authors NEW YORK (Reuters) – The book publishing industry may be experiencing lean times and lower sales, but a new survey shows fat incomes for many of the world's top authors in the past year. Bestselling thriller fiction author James Patterson topped the list of high-paid writers released on Friday by Forbes.com, earning $70 million, which includes his latest deal to pen 17 books by the end of 2012 for an estimated $100 million. The Forbes rankings were based on earnings from books, film rights, television, gaming deals and other income from June 1, 2009, through June 1, 2010. The 63-year-old Patterson has written more than 50 bestsellers and sold more than 170 million books worldwide, creating a franchise that expanded into Hollywood, television, comic book and gaming deals. Vampire romance author Stephenie Meyer, whose "Twilight" series has been adapted into a top-grossing film series, earned $40 million despite not releasing a new book in the time frame of the Forbes.com survey. Her new 192-page novella, her first title in two years, was released in June. Stephen King, the horror and suspense perennial bestseller, placed third with $34 million, including $8 million from backlist sales, according to the Forbes survey. His last novel, "Under the Dome", was released in November, selling 600,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan. Coming in fourth place was romance writer Danielle Steel, who earned $32 million, followed by British writer Ken Follett, whose 1989 acclaimed novel "The Pillars of the Earth" has been adapted into a U.S. TV miniseries. He raked in $20 million. U.S. author Dean Koontz was No. 6, taking in $18 million with "The Husband," which was optioned for film, while romance adventure author Janet Evanovich, famed for the "Stephanie Plum" romantic adventure book series, made $16 million. Legal thriller writer John Grisham, romance writer Nicholas Sparks and prolific British author J.K. Rowling, who made $10 million -- a smaller sum for the billionaire after she did not release a new book in the past year -- rounded out the top 10. The full list can be found on www.forbes.com. news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100820/en_nm/us_books_authors
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2010 16:46:19 GMT -5
The ironic thing is that even though I know around half a dozen authors - most of whom have had four or more books published - not ONE of them has made any serious money out of them.
The Pattersons, Rowlings and similar successful authors are a tiny minority of published writers.
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Post by beth on Aug 26, 2010 13:16:03 GMT -5
I don't mind seeing Rowlings do well. If fact, I'm glad for her. She had a good idea and ran with it .. plus, she's a pretty good writer - better on some of the books than others. James Patterson, OTOH, is, IMO, the worst kind of hack, and I'm amazed and perplexed he does so well. I guess a lot of people like 3 paged, double spaced chapters.
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aubrey
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Post by aubrey on Sept 26, 2010 5:39:26 GMT -5
I really hate Patterson. He can't write!! His stuff is unrealistic in every way - police procedure (well, I hope it is: I hope real police wouldn't be so stupid and vindictive), the way people think, history, other writers - and his action sequences are laughable and appallingly dull. He is also completely humourless, imagining that this is something that makes him serious. Terrible. If I'd written one of his books, I'd be embarrassed even to show it to anyone else, let alone publish it.
Stephen King can be really good when he tries, and even when he doesn't try he is always readable.
Evanovich is great - very funny and sometimes very exciting. She can write action sequences.
I've only read one of Koonst's books, a very early SF novel written when he was eating dog food - or was at least whhen he was not making much. Anti Man, I think it was called. Pretty good.
Don't know the others: but I did like the comment I saw once, about Twilight: "Where's Buffy, now that we need her?"
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Post by fretslider on Sept 26, 2010 6:17:47 GMT -5
JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series of books (just in case you've been living under a rock for the past few years), has been voted "the greatest living British writer" in a recent poll in The Book Magazine. Discworld author Terry Pratchett came second, but received just a third of the total number of votes bestowed upon Rowling. Christine Kidney, editor of The Book Magazine, says this "provides a fascinating insight into what the British public thinks makes a 'great' writer." I can't say I'd describe myself as fascinated, but rather astonished. In fact, I might even go so far as to describe my current state as horrified. For Rowling to be given this accolade above such talented and accomplished writers as Iain Banks, Philip Pullman, and Salman Rushdie is nothing short of outrageous. For her share of the votes to be three times that of Pratchett is downright appalling. Rowling's prose is deeply unimaginative, when compared to the vast majority of the other authors on this list. Her content is unoriginal, even if she is dismissive of her peers and cites other sources as the inspiration for her work. And she's not exactly the most prolific author in the world. But who am I to question to writing ability of Britain's greatest? The public has spoken. It's clear that the public is convinced, thanks to the popularity of her books, that she's the best writer we've got. Rowling has received this award simply because her books have achieved a far greater amount of publicity. If Iain Banks' Culture novels had been successfully adapted into Hollywood movies, would his name be top of the list? If a wizard named Rincewind had graced our screens, instead of a wizard named Harry, would Pratchett be crowned the greatest? blogcritics.org/books/article/jk-rowling-is-the-greatest/#ixzz10dKiZdE4
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aubrey
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Post by aubrey on Sept 26, 2010 10:18:54 GMT -5
UK LeGuin and D Wynne Jones both did a series of books about Wizard schools - LeGuin in the 60s and Wynne Jones in the 80s - I think the Wynne Jones books are more like Harry Potter, being set - at least in part - in a world than is like contemporary Britain; they are also very funny.
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Post by beth on Sept 26, 2010 14:05:35 GMT -5
I don't think juvenile and adult books should be lumped in together for something like "greatest living writer". Pratchett would have been fine, Rowlings is a stretch. My pick for greatest Eng. juvenile writer is Samuel Youd, who also writes under the pen name John Christopher, for his White Mountains trilogy (The White Mountains, City of Gold and Lead, and Pool of Fire). He's in his 80s now with his prolific years behind him and should have been recognized. IMO, those books are, arguably the best childrens' books ever written and also beloved by many adults.
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on Sept 26, 2010 14:35:21 GMT -5
JK Rowling has in a way been very clever by disguising the traditional boarding-school novel that has always been popular but politics makes anyone ashamed to admit, with a fantasy veneer to make it acceptable. If we look at it that way round instead of emphasising the magic then it makes a lot of sense. She even has the worst of class snobbery disguised as the difference between natural wizards and muggles they can pity from their position of natural superiority. I wonder if the books, more than the films, don't have a larger adult readership than child: wouldn't we all wish that schooldays could have been so exciting - and so privileged?
My initial reaction is to blame the unholy combination of belief in popularity and financial return as evidence of excellence. On reflection, that is unfair: it is the educational and literary establishments that are to blame. There's a big kerfuffle about boys not reading enough. Well, the publishers of Mad Magazine were founded in the 1950s to produce classic novels in graphic format because American boys were not reading them. Nothing new there!
I admit to the classic of condemnation without reading. What I've seen of synopses and character outline does not inspire me to bother with the wholly fantasy world of Harry Potter - a world really more fantastical than anything Terry Pratchett has ever written , where he says himself that he felt inspired to see how the fantasy conventions would have to fit with a real world living all around them. Hogwarts suffers from the bane of bad space opera and fantasy alike, that absolutely anything might happen, so if we don't know what the rules are, or suspect there are no rules at all, nothing can really come as a surprise.
There is something else though, because I have never liked Dickens for the same reason. He wrote monthly episodes for a readership versed in the melodrama he loved, adjusting to suit as he went along - and it shows. Yet the status of Dickens as a Classic Author is not disputable. Neither is Jane Austen's extremely closed-in world which knows nothing of the slavery and industrial revolution (or even the French and American Revolutions) going on at the time. Somehow, I do not think that Harry Potter will ever achieve the eternity of David Copperfield or Elizabeth Bennet.
The literary establishment has for years seemingly given its accolade on a combination of certain Mighty Figures slapping each other's back and anything they feel the Plebs will find too boring or intellectual (often both). They have promoted the idea that Literature is hard work - so anything that threatens to be remotely literate is going to be a chore. And having read some of it, I agree. Far too many of the Great Names appear to have written one novel in a dozen permutations and far too often, they like to write about themselves, that is the problems of novelists stuck with writer's block and an immature social life. Otherwise, 'magic realism' is a nice favourite to avoid the problems of 'realistic realism'.
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Post by fretslider on Sept 26, 2010 14:47:46 GMT -5
Nail on head, Erasmus.....
"belief in popularity and financial return as evidence of excellence."
And it isn't just books is it. TV, Brit (crap) art, music. It pervades all forms of art and entertainment.
Drop it all down to the lowest common denominator, make it 'accessible'.
A*s all round.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2010 17:40:47 GMT -5
The irony is that Rowling only wrote the first Harry Potter book herself. The others have all been ghost-written.
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Jessiealan
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Post by Jessiealan on Sept 27, 2010 18:12:20 GMT -5
The irony is that Rowling only wrote the first Harry Potter book herself. The others have all been ghost-written. Where did you get that information, Mike Marshall? Will you post a reference link, please? I do not think that is correct.
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on Sept 27, 2010 20:50:01 GMT -5
Nail on head, Erasmus..... "belief in popularity and financial return as evidence of excellence." And it isn't just books is it. TV, Brit (crap) art, music. It pervades all forms of art and entertainment. Drop it all down to the lowest common denominator, make it 'accessible'. A*s all round. and the biggest irony of the lot is Bill the Bard Shakespeare only got where he did (and was not regarded very highly until the late 19 th century) more than any other wrote for bums on seats, or at least standing in the Penny Pit. Mind you, a penny was a fair expense when you could take the kids to a decent bear-baiting and with any luck a hanging for free. But Shakespeare's genius is exactly that he can present deep psychological insight in a way to make the groundlings laugh at his really crude sexual innuendo. No playwright in any language has done that since. His closest might be Ibsen - but O dear, look for the cheap laughs in Ibsen! Of course we do not see Shakespeare's cheap laughs because slang and attitudes have changed in 400 years. I have always believed that the character spelt Jacques and pronounced today Jake-wheeze is a cheap jibe at the French because at that time, Jakes meant the outdoor lavatory and Jacks is still the Irish equivalent to The Bog (after all, Ireland has more than enough real peaty bogs!) and French probably sounded as different from the modern language as his English did from ours. But the fact remains that whether Shakespeare really was a literary genius or the actor-producer who wrote some of the plays down that others imagined for him, that Elizabethan period and most that followed it until the late 19 th century or even later did not have the class distinction of exclusion from 'Culture', just like Italians and Germans today expect their local opera house to produce opera for the masses as much as for the elite. I personally am no great fan of opera, though I like the Russian stuff and Carmen. Who could not like Carmen? It's we today call musical that people will admit to liking who'ld run like the Devil was up their arse were it called Opera or Operetta. I despair of my snob musical credentials - I actually like most of Andrew Lloyd-Webber (not Phantom of the Opera) and think him today's Mozart for making sung drama popular. Sure, over the years, he has repeated melodies and themes and ideas - but didn't Wagner ( "some wonderful moments and appalling quarters of an hour" according to Mark Twain) and Mozart? I went to see Cats with my girlfriend some 25 years ago. It can't have been respectable serious music because it was bloody fun ;D
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Post by mouse on Sept 28, 2010 5:50:34 GMT -5
Nail on head, Erasmus..... "belief in popularity and financial return as evidence of excellence." And it isn't just books is it. TV, Brit (crap) art, music. It pervades all forms of art and entertainment. Drop it all down to the lowest common denominator, make it 'accessible'. A*s all round. its what is known as inclusivity...we mustnt be elitisy...must we frankly i sont know why not..i thought standards were suposed to go up not down
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Erasmus
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Post by Erasmus on Sept 28, 2010 11:54:44 GMT -5
It makes sense when you think that the producers themselves are no better than the people they are producing for. At the same time, they are far more arrogant than the old Reithian BBC. They thought then that the public was quite capable of assimilating serious programming along with the belly-laughs. Now, they seem to be a bunch of none-too-bright themselves thinking they are such smart-arses that anything they can understand must be far beyond the general public's comprehension. That applies especially to children's programming. They assume that the poor little dears can't follow anything for longer than five seconds, so they produce stuff that can't be followed for more than five seconds (or isn't worth following). So the expectation comes true. Yet the kids have shown that they can follow a narrative like HP and the adults are quite capable of following a 90 minute football match and discussing details of technique. The ability is there, it is just assumed out under circumstances that the powers that be have decreed difficult. This from Spiked is not exactly the same thing but it is related: Being a schoolboy is not a special need
In his new BBC show, affable choirmaster Gareth Malone joins the chorus of complaints about underachieving lads.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2010 12:38:15 GMT -5
The irony is that Rowling only wrote the first Harry Potter book herself. The others have all been ghost-written. Where did you get that information, Mike Marshall? Will you post a reference link, please? I do not think that is correct. It's common knowledge in the literary world - as is the fact that she stole her first book wholesale from an American writer. I'll see if I can dig out a link for you, Jessie.
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