BY JAMES PATTERSON & LOIS WINSTON?

There’s a growing trend in fiction that leaves me with mixed feelings. I’m sure you’ve seen it. James Patterson seems to do it the most, but other bestselling authors are jumping on the bandwagon. They write books with co-authors. The co-authors are pretty much unknown or even totally unknown. I don’t know where they come from. I don’t know how the advances and royalties are split up. I doubt it’s 50/50.

What’s in it for either author? The no-name author gets a huge career boost by immediately winding up on the bestseller lists. The big name author gets someone else to do most of the work, then he or she goes in and spit polishes the manuscript until it’s worthy of his name. I suppose it’s a win/win for both. If it weren’t, the trend would die a quick death rather than be growing the way it is.

As I said, I’m not sure how I feel about this. At first I was leaning more toward being against it. In some ways it feels like cheating, but if James Patterson wanted to offer me a partnership, I’d probably jump at the chance. Really, could you turn down an offer to co-write a book with a bestselling author?

Lately I’m having second thoughts from the perspective of the bestselling author. Disclaimer here: I am not now, nor have I ever been a bestselling author. As much as I’d like to be, I have yet to hit a list, even an extended one. However, I began to wonder if maybe James Patterson and others were doing this co-authoring stuff not so much to see how many bestsellers one author could possibly have on the NY Times list at once but because there are just so many hours in a day and too many ideas.

That’s my problem. I have all these ideas for books, both series and stand-alones, spinning around in my head. I’m on deadline. I have books I’m contracted to write. I have proposals out for more. And I have still more I’d like to write. What I don’t have are enough hours in the day to write all the books I’d like to write. Maybe that’s what James Patterson thought, and this was his solution. After all, no matter how fast a writer you are, if the number of books you want to write outnumbers the time you have to write them, you’ve got a problem.

So what about the rest of you? Are there books you’d love to write but can’t find the time to write? Do you wonder if you’ll ever be able to write them? Would you ever consider a partnership with another author to solve this problem?