James Patterson to donate £250k to independent bookshops

James Patterson, whose crime fiction sells in the hundreds of millions around the world, is to donate £250,000 to independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland.

The US author, who has topped the New York Times bestseller list a record 57 times with his Alex Cross thrillers, said bookshops played an essential role in society and child development and their plight in the face of cheap online booksellers such as Amazon needed to be highlighted. "We're in a revolution and evolution period because of ebooks and online book distributors, the Amazons of the world, so I just want to try and make that transition as orderly, fair and as smart as we can," he said.

The grants of between £250 and £5,000 will focus on schemes aimed at encouraging reading among children. Any independent bookshop with a dedicated children's section is eligible to apply.

Patterson said he was concerned that the absence of independent bookshops on the high street was hindering children's access to books, and wanted to stem their rapid closure. The number of independent bookshops in the UK is below 1,000, with 67 closing last year, leaving just 987 across the UK.

The author said: "Right now we need places in the world where people can go out and talk about books, and independent bookstores and libraries are those places So I want to do whatever I can do to shine a light on the problem facing independent bookstores. This online monopoly of places like Amazon affects every community where there is a independent bookstore. It's a big deal.

"A lot of people are turning to ebooks. Ebooks are fine but it's not fine to put small, independent bookshops out of business, it's not fine for libraries to be closed down and school libraries to have less funding. Those are not good things."

Patterson said the donation was about saving not only independent bookshops but also the whole local communities they serve.

He added: "One problem is that, as there are less bookstores and less libraries, parents are going less and there are no books coming into homes for kids. My worry is that kids have not made the transition to ebooks, so are not reading books, which, in my view, hinders their development.

"These are people who are going to grow up who never have access to that world of potential and creativity that books open up for them. In the States we have so many people who see things in black and white terms, which is a disaster. You need to read a lot to begin to understand the world and, if young people don't read, we are going to have a world of knuckleheads."

Patterson was inspired to offer the grant after piloting a successful similar scheme in the US, donating $1m (£590,000) to fund a range of schemes, ideas and renovations at small book retailers across the country.

Patterson conceded that, though his money would benefit bookshops, it would not provide a long-term solution to their plight and he was adamant that online booksellers such as Amazon needed to "step up and take responsibility".

"Amazon are certainly putting a tremendous strain on the book industry as a whole and I think they can and should help. If they are going to be the major book supplier in the world I would like to see them take responsibility, because that is a big responsibility. I think right now they have to think about whether it is a good thing that they are responsible for putting independent booksellers and even the big book chains out of business, for having an effect on funding for libraries."

He added: "I would hope that rather than wanting to control the book business, Amazon would say, we want to be the saviour of reading. They are in a position where they can do that, still make a lot of money and really do well but also be a great citizen in the book world. That would be my hope. Otherwise American culture and English culture is going to suffer."

Eleanor Davies, owner of Linghams in Wirral, which was named independent bookseller of the year 2013, said it was "completely fantastic" that Patterson was championing UK independent bookshops.

She said: "I do think this is something that authors are beginning to recognise which is the value of the independents. We are the ones that actually talk about their books individually to our customers. A bookshop that's worth it's salt does so much more than just sell books. We run events here all the time so people can meet the authors here and talk about the books they've written... It's in the independents that the unusual and the individual books are put forward and discovered."

Davies continued: "The effect that Amazon is having on us is awful, there's no two ways about it. We have customers who come in and talk to us for 20 minutes about books, then go away and order them on Amazon. They won't be able to do that if we go."

Tim West, co-owner of the independent Big Green bookshop, a small bookshop in Wood Green, North London, said his shop would be applying for one of the grants.

"This is brilliant, as any publicity for the independent bookshops is important and we will definitely be putting in an application. It's a tough businesses owning a bookshop these days and we are keeping our heads just above water," he said.

This is not Patterson's first crusade to highlight the plight of bookshops. In April last year, he took out an advert in the New York Review of Books that said: "If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature? Who will discover and mentor new writers? Who will publish our important books? What will happen if there are no more books like these?"