The LA Times Festival of Books was this past weekend. It’s one of the most popular and anticipated book festivals in the country. There was a little of just about everything.

I’m not really interested in the awards that were havded out. Except for James Patterson’s. I’ve already written about it on here, but the reason I want to talk about it again is because he gave a speech at the awards gala. He talked about his BookShots project I’ve also already written about. I didn’t get to see his entire speech, but I did see some. And I still just don’t know why he (or his publisher) think these books are going to get people to somehow enjoy books.

I understand that he’s done a lot of things as an author and many of those things have proven very lucrative, but this just isn’t adding up for me. People who don’t read, DON’T READ. They don’t care how many times you say the book is like reading a movie. They don’t care how many pages the book has. And they don’t care who’s writing the books. I don’t know if everyone involved in this is clueless or arrogant.

This is like a beer or drink company proclaiming they’ve come up with the drink to get EVERYONE drinking, even people like me who refuse to drink alcohol for any reason.

I’ll end with a question for Patterson and the team behind this new project. What evidence do you have that these books will be bought by anyone besides Patterson’s regular readers? I’d love to know.