Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

James Patterson Giving Cash to Bookstores

Independent bookstores, with their paper-thin profit margins and competition from Amazon, have found themselves a Daddy Warbucks.

The best-selling author James Patterson has started a program to give away $1 million of his personal fortune to dozens of bookstores, allowing them to invest in improvements, dole out bonuses to employees and expand literacy outreach programs.

More than 50 stores across the country will begin receiving cash grants this week, from Percy’s Burrow in Topsham, Me., to Page & Palette in Fairhope, Ala., to A Whale of a Tale in Irvine, Calif.

“I just want to get people more aware and involved in what’s going on here, which is that, with the advent of e-books, we either have a great opportunity or a great problem,” he said. “Our bookstores in America are at risk. Publishing and publishers as we’ve known them are at stake. To some extent the future of American literature is at stake.”

Image
The author James Patterson is giving independent bookstores personal grants.Credit...Bret Hartman/Reuters

The current health of independent bookstores is mixed. While some have benefited from the disappearance of the Borders chain in 2011 and a shrinking Barnes & Noble, the stores have been hit especially hard with consumers switching from paper copies to e-books.

And though many communities remain loyal to their shops, and the American Booksellers Association says its membership has recently grown, the online discounters have wreaked havoc on the independent bookseller’s business model.

Michael Pietsch, the chief executive of Hachette Book Group, said that while some have prospered, there has been “a cataclysmic loss in the number of independent bookstores” over the last two to three decades. “The stores that have weathered the significant downturn have had very good years recently,” Mr. Pietsch said. “But there are many stores that have not had that success.”

Mr. Patterson, the 66-year-old author of the Alex Cross detective books, young-adult fiction, nonfiction and even romance novels, has been one of the loudest voices in the book world warning about the publishing industry’s troubles. He is also one of the industry’s wealthiest writers. Each year, his publisher, Hachette, releases about 13 of his books, which seem to occupy semi-permanent spots on the best-seller lists. (From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Patterson’s books accounted for one out of every 17 hardcover novels purchased in the United States.)

Last year, Mr. Patterson placed full-page ads in The New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly arguing that the federal government’s financial support of troubled industries like Wall Street and the automobile sector should extend to the bookstore business. Since that appears to be a pipe dream, Mr. Patterson decided to create his own bailout fund as part of his mission to promote literature, especially for children.

Image
Stephen Colbert in 2012 at the Bank Street Bookstore in Manhattan, which is receiving money.Credit...Yana Paskova for The New York Times

“I’m rich; I don’t need to sell more books,” Mr. Patterson said. “But I do think it’s essential for kids to read more broadly. And people just need to go into bookstores more. It’s not top of mind as much as it used to be.”

He began his project last year by getting the word to store owners that he was willing to begin writing them checks, which will range from $2,000 to $15,000, according to a spokeswoman for Mr. Patterson.

Bookstores responded with informal mini-proposals, explaining what they might do with some extra money. Bank Street Bookstore in Manhattan said it would use the funds to post and stream online video of in-store events. Hicklebee’s in San Jose, Calif., said it wanted to buy a new computer system, replacing its “small, ancient screens with green print” and perhaps bestow a bonus on its hardworking manager, Ann Seaton.

“I think it’s going to have a huge impact,” said Linda Marie Barrett, the general manager of Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, N.C., which successfully applied for a grant to replace badly worn carpeting and a damaged parquet floor. “He seems to be keenly aware that bookstores operate on small budgets.”

Elaine Petrocelli, the owner of Book Passage in the Bay Area, said she was thrilled to hear this week that the store had qualified for a grant, which would go toward the purchase of a van for mobile author events and book fairs. While business has been good lately, she said, the more than $20,000 necessary to buy a used van was prohibitive.

“We can’t have a business plan that says James Patterson is going to come along and give us something every year, but these are things that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Ms. Petrocelli said. “It wouldn’t mean we’d go out of business, but it would mean that this particular dream would be put off for a few years.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Patterson Giving Cash to Bookstores. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT