Author James Patterson accuses New York Times cooking Best Sellers list in ... trends now

James Patterson has accused the New York Times of 'cooking' its Best Sellers list, pointing out how the newspaper doesn't appear to base the list on sales alone but rather some other kind of intricate methodology.

Patterson first sparked concerns last weekend in tweet in which he raised suspicions over how the list was calculated.

'What's up with @NYTimes best seller lists? Anybody besides me notice that @MikePompeo's book sold more copies than 6 titles on today's list?' he asked.

'And, last week, J.D. Robb's (that's Nora Roberts's pen name) novel wasn't on the fiction list even though it was still selling more than 4 other titles there. By 'best' seller, does the Times mean best for their target audience?' he wrote.

As an author, Patterson, who claims to be a left-leaning political independent, has thrived like few others, publishing multiple bestsellers each year, including novels and children's books.

Best selling author, James Patterson, has accused the New York Times of manipulating its Best Sellers list by not basing it solely on sales

Patterson expressed his concerns on Twitter after noticing that some books with lower sales had made the list while some others with higher sales did not

He is ranked with J.K. Rowling and a handful of others as among the world's wealthiest writers.

But after the New York Times failed to respond to his tweets, the 76-year-old penned a formal letter to the editor of the newspaper, for which he also failed to receive a response.

'They told my publisher they didn't rely on just 'raw' sales. And they refused to run the letter,' he explained in a tweet on Sunday, while posting the entire letter.

Patterson, who is arguably the world's most prolific writer, with more than 400 titles to his name: thrillers, non-fiction on subjects ranging from Jeffrey Epstein to the Kennedys to ER nurses, plus true crime books, children's and young-adult stories, told of his longtime support for the newspaper before making his point.

'I'm a longtime reader of The New York Times. Since 1971, when I first moved to New York City, I've devoured your paper. Every. Single. Day. ... I'm also an author and have paid special attention to your book review section and to the bestseller lists it contains. As a reader of the newspaper, I know mistakes are sometimes made,' he began.