He employs others to do the writing. He provides a detailed outline with inflection points called “beats”.
He controls his marketing and distribution.
His writing is so fast-paced, each chapter is maybe 350 words or so, large type, wide margins. You can read one of his books in nibbles in the bathroom or between other more important chores in your life.
He owns his audience. He doesn’t make the mistake of expecting them to be sophisticated readers. They register noun-verb-subject and on to the next sentence.
He’s a fiction factory, immensely wealthy and puts out product like it’s pre-packaged fast-food. Writers who want riches study him. His formula works. Ask Tom Clancy...oh, sorry, he’s gone, but I believe several of his smaller production facilities are still in existence.
The above tells you all you need to know about the mass-market paperback audience.
If it’s so wonderful there why were the Cuban’s always crying about the US embargo?
If this moron had been in Cuba when Castro took over, all of his wealth would have been confiscated to make sure that the entire population of Cuba would be the beneficiary of his former estate.
In today’s Cuba the only people with Patterson’s level of wealth have a name that ends in Castro.
“He employs others to do the writing. He provides a detailed outline with inflection points called “beats”.”
I’ve always suspected as much. It sounds like you have a better understanding of the details of how such a writing franchise works. Lots of money involved. After it’s written, I’ve suspected that there’s a whole other process of selling products in the story, such as in place of using a generic term, there’s marketers who do nothing but sell the rights to a name brand company. Instead of a character going to a restaurant and ordering a drink, the character goes into a Hyatt and orders a Bacardi. All of it cheapens the quality of the ‘work’ in favor of doing everything to rake in the dollars.
“You can read one of his books in nibbles in the bathroom”
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the length of the chapters are actually designed to correspond with the length of time of it takes for the average dump.