Spending is plummeting and visits are on the decline, but James Patterson’s prescription for embattled libraries is a marketing campaign.
“Free books!” Patterson tells the Guardian. “Imagine in the mall if there was a free store. You wouldn’t be able to get in the place.”
According to the bestselling author and former advertising executive, all marketing is just “getting people to look at something differently. They’re just not looking at libraries correctly now, they’re thinking about ‘old fogey’ and ‘quiet, quiet’ rather than oh, free books.”
Patterson does not deny the importance of funding, and has donated £50,000 of his own money to fund books for school libraries in the UK, but argues that if people want libraries to stay open, they need to use them. Official UK figures show that the number of library branches in England, Scotland and Wales dropped by 105 last year, with visits down by 3% year on year, and funding down £66m.
“It really starts with the people,” he says. “If we show our support, that it’s something we care about, we’re the voters and they pay attention when votes are on the line. If we don’t care, they don’t care.”
Growing up, Patterson’s mother was a teacher and a librarian, and he spent a lot of time in his local library in Newburgh, New York. “She didn’t have a lot of money, so she’d reach into her own pocket and buy books for her class,” says Patterson, whose £50,000 “big book giveaway” with Scholastic in the UK will offer grants to 200 schools to fund books for their libraries. He has been offering similar funding to US schools since 2015, when he also donated $1.75m (£1.3m) to US public school libraries and $1m to independent bookstores. In the UK, he has also donated £500,000 to independent bookshops.
“Absolutely the state needs to step up too, but there’s nothing wrong with individuals stepping up as well. That’s a good thing,” he says of the Scholastic giveaway, pointing to “the vital role that school libraries, librarians and teachers play in transforming lives and fostering a love for reading”.
Patterson himself is about to publish the first in a new adventure series for children following the adventures of 12-year-old orphan – and genius – Max Einstein, which is inspired and officially approved by the Albert Einstein Archives.
“When they came, they gave me the name Max Einstein and I said ‘I want Max to be a girl’,” he says. “I think it’s very important that we encourage girls to consider science and maths for careers and that hasn’t happened as much as it should.”
Also fresh from publishing a bestselling thriller, The President Is Missing, which he co-wrote with Bill Clinton, Patterson says that “maybe somewhere down the line” he might pen another thriller with the former US president – but probably not the current White House incumbent.
“No, I can’t imagine writing one with president Trump. But we’ll see what life serves us up.”
