Honorary Chairman
In January 2010, the New York Times Magazine featured James Patterson on its cover and hailed him as having “transformed book publishing.”
In the last decade, James Patterson has sold more books than any other author (according to Bookscan), and in total, James’s books have sold an estimated 300 million copies worldwide. In 2013, one out of every five suspense/thriller novels sold was by James Patterson. He is the first author to have #1 new titles simultaneously on the New York Times adult and children’s bestsellers lists and is the only author to have five new hardcover novels debut at #1 on the list in one year. James Patterson holds the New York Times record for most bestselling novels by a single author, which is also a Guinness World Record.
Patterson has sold over 30 million kids’ books. His critically acclaimed Maximum Ride series debuted on the New York Times bestsellers list at #1 and remained there for twelve straight weeks. The series has sold 13 million copies worldwide and has made 120 cumulative appearances on the New York Times bestsellers lists. His bestselling Middle School series launched in 2011 with the publication of Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life. Since then, this series has sold over 5 million copies. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life has 2.6 million copies in print, and James recently donated 45,000 copies of this book to sixth-graders in New York City as well as 28,000 copies of books in the Middle School series to students in Chicago.
For the past decade, Patterson has been devoting more and more of his time to championing books and reading. His website, ReadKiddoRead.com, is designed to help parents, teachers, and librarians ignite the next generation’s excitement about reading. Patterson’s Book Bucks programs provide book gift certificates to be spent at local independent bookstores. He has also donated over 650,000 books to soldiers at home and overseas. Recently, he donated over $26 million dollars to the University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt University, and Manhattan College, and he’s established scholarships in teacher education at twenty-two schools. In 2014, Patterson will distribute one million dollars in grants to independent bookstores with children’s sections.
Patterson is the creator of the top-selling new detective series of the past twenty years, the Alex Cross series. The series was adapted into the films “Along Came a Spider” and “Kiss the Girls,” starring Academy Award–winning actor Morgan Freeman. He is also the creator of the #1 new detective series of the past ten years, the Women’s Murder Club, from which the ABC television drama series was adapted. CBS has given a straight-to-series order for thirteen episodes of Zoo, a drama based on his bestselling novel of the same name, for broadcast in summer 2015. His bestselling young adult fantasy series Maximum Ride is currently being adapted by Collective Digital Studio into an online series for YouTube.
He is the author of novels—from The Thomas Berryman Number (1976) to Honeymoon (2005)—that have won awards including the Edgar, the BCA Mystery Guild’s Thriller of the Year, the International Thriller of the Year award, and the Reader’s Digest Reader’s Choice Award. In 2010, he won the Children’s Book Council’s Children’s Choice Award for Author of the Year.
Patterson received a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College and a master’s degree from Vanderbilt University. He lives in Palm Beach with his wife, Sue, and his son, Jack.
For more information, please visit:
JamesPatterson.com | ReadKiddoRead.com
