A topic that endlessly fascinates me is how UK and US publishers are fighting over who should have territorial rights in Europe. In a nutshell, the US advocates an open market while the UK is protective of their rights interests. But a new wrinkle has developed in the form of an irate memo sent by Karl Heinz Petzler, managing director of the Portuguese distributor Lisma Lda. In it, he accuses the Hachette Book Group of a “cold coup,” and “an unheard of act of self-castration” after a recent visit by an HBG representative who informed him that the company “had unilaterally decided that, whenever a book is published by both the US and the UK publishers belonging to that group, the respective UK publishers will have the exclusive distribution right in Europe.”

Petzler found it odd the decision was “made silently” without an official statement, declaring that “the people inside your group, who made this decision (who certainly do not have an American passport), do not really care about their customers, but also do not care about their authors, who will lose sales.” He names James Patterson, Nichols Sparks & Michael Connelly as authors who will “lose out” on sales by not having their American editions distributed in Continental Europe. “I wonder, if this decision was made silently in order not to upset the authors and their agents, who, I am sure, would not agree that a publisher does not want to sell their books in the open market.”

HBG’s response, if any, hasn’t hit our mailboxes, but this is a story that can only develop further….

I’ve said all along that to treat James Patterson like any other author – and hold him to the same standards – is an unwise move. He used to run an advertising agency, and the model he’s concocted is clearly based on having a CEO come up with big ideas, and creative mouses scurrying around to flesh them out with backbreaking deadlines. (Or as Little, Brown publisher Michael Pietsch puts it, Patterson is effectively “developing a studio system for writers.” That’s contrary to the image of “the lonely writer in a garret,” Pietsch says. “But a lot of great popular entertainment, even great and serious art, comes out of collaboration.”) As it happens, USA TODAY’s Bob Minzesheimer gets a clearer look at the working life (and success) of Patterson thanks to the author, his newest co-writer and other publishing insiders. Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch calculated that if Patterson were treated as a publishing house unto himself, he’d be tied for fourth for most No. 1 best sellers in 2006 — ahead of all of HarperCollins, a major publisher. Exactly.

Minzesheimer also discovers how Patterson’s newest co-authorship with Michael Ledwidge came about. The latter had written three novels that yielded big advances but sold a combined total of 20,000 copies. He’d known Patterson in his doorman days, and the bestseller helped land an agent. When Ledwidge asked Patterson to look at a draft of what he hoped would be his fourth novel, Patterson had a counteroffer: Would he be interested in collaborating on a novel Patterson had in mind? Ledwidge says he agreed “at about the speed of light.”

Patterson had the outline, Ledwidge fleshed him out and the younger author seems very happy with the arrangement, since he can now write full-time. “It’s like a dream; to have one job, not two…If you look at the newsletter of the Mystery Writers of America, everyone is always talking about how to market yourself, not the writing part. Now I don’t have to worry about that.”