“It was like listening to a can of Coca-Cola describe how it would like to be marketed”
James Patterson outsells J.K. Rowling, John Grisham and Dan Brown put together. He’s topped the New York Times bestseller list 35 times, and has so many books coming out in the next few months he’s lost count. His self-branding has been so good they teach an MBA course devoted to him at Harvard. The professor, John Deighton, had heard Patterson give a talk and was stunned by his canniness. “I’d never actually heard a product speak,” Deighton recalled. “It was like listening to a can of Coca-Cola describe how it would like to be marketed.”