He has sold over 12 million copies of his books and they have been translated into several other languages, including Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, and Russian.

His father was a university professor and had an extensive library of books which became one of Abbott's first sources of literature.

He graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in English literature and majors in Music and Psychology.

After college, he travelled to Europe, returned home, and found work at several bookstores and a publishing company.

[2] While taking writing class from Patricia Reilly Giff and several failures, Abbott finally published his book Danger Guys.