Patterson should think about the fact that his novels aren't very good and he doesn't write most of his own material. He's a pulp-fiction machine who got rich pumping out cheap beach reads, and eventually paying other people to write cheap beach reads for him.

There's nothing wrong with that, but Patterson hardly has insight into what publishing means to people of diverse backgrounds.

I mean, it's probably appropriate to talk about his Alex Cross series, novels about a Black cop in Washington DC.

There's nothing offensive about the novels, but there's nothing authentic about them either. Patterson has no idea how to voice a Black man, and he has no idea what sorts of issues face the people he writes about in those novels.

But he made millions writing them and eventually paying other people to write them under his name.

This a perfect example of WHY we need diversity in publishing. When a publishing house pays a middle-aged white man from a privileged background to write a series of novels about a Black cop, you know we have a systemic problem the industry needs to work on.

Well, in recent years they have been working on it, and evidently that upsets Patterson.

But it certainly doesn't upset people who want to read more authentic voices. It doesn't upset people tired of reading mediocre white men who have little idea what they're writing about.