Jakes was born in Chicago, Illinois. He first sold stories to pulp magazines while still in college in the early 1950s. He studied creative writing at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, graduating in 1953. He then earned an M.A. in American literature from The Ohio State University.

Jakes published several stories and novels over the 20 years following completion of college, many of them fantasy fiction, science fiction and westerns and other sorts of historical fiction, while working in the advertising industry. In 1971, he began to write full time.

During this time, he was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America , a loose-knit group of heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies.

He gained widespread popularity with the publication of his Kent Family Chronicles, which became a bestselling American Bicentennial Series of books in the mid to late 1970s, selling 55 million copies. He has since published several more popular works of historical fiction, most dealing with American history, including the North and South Trilogy about the U.S. Civil War, which sold 10 million copies and was turned into an ABC-TV miniseries.

Jakes lives in South Carolina and Florida with his wife, Rachel, to whom he has been married since 1951.

Mainstream novels

The Kent Family Chronicles

• The Bastard (1974)
• The Rebels (1975)
• The Seekers (1975)
• The Furies (1976)
• The Titans (1976)
• The Warriors (1977)
• The Lawless (1978)
• The Americans (1979)

The North and South trilogy

• North and South (1982)
• Love and War (1984)
• Heaven and Hell (1987)

The Crown Family Saga

• Homeland (1993)
• American Dreams (1998)

Other

• A Night For Treason (1956)
• Wear A Fast Gun (1956)
• The Devil Has Four Faces (1958)
• The Seventh Man (1958)
• I, Barbarian (1959) (as Jay Scotland)
• Johnny Havoc (1960)
• Sir Scoundrel (1962) (as Jay Scotland)
• Arena (1963) (as Jay Scotland)
• Making It Big aka Johnny Havoc And The Siren In Red (1968)
• California Gold (1989)
• In The Big Country (1993), later reissued as The Bold Frontier (2001)
• On Secret Service (2000)
• Charleston (2002)
• Savannah or a Gift for Mr. Lincoln (2004)
• Funeral for Tanner Moody (with Elmer Kelton, Robert Randish) (2004)
• The Gods of Newport (2006)

Science fiction and fantasy

Brak the Barbarian series

• Brak the Barbarian (1968)
• Brak the Barbarian: The Mark of Demons (1969)
• Brak the Barbarian: The Sorceress (1969)
• Brak: When Idols Walked (1978)
• The Fortunes of Brak (1980)

Other

• When The Star Kings Dies (1967)
• The Asylum World (1969)
• The Hybrid (1969)
• The Last Magicians (1969)
• The Planet Wizard (1969)
• Secrets Of Stardeep (1969)
• Tonight We Steal the Stars (1969)
• Mask of Chaos (1970)
• Six-Gun Planet (1970)
• Black in Time (1970)
• Mention My Name in Atlantis (1972)
• Time Gate (1972)
• Witch Of The Dark Gate (1972)
• Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
• Excalibur (1985) with Gil Kane

Children's books

• Susanna of the Alamo (1986)

Nonfiction

• Famous Firsts In Sports (1967)
• Great War Correspondents (1967))
• Great Women Reporters (1969)
• Mohawk: The Life Of Joseph Brant (1969)

Collections

• The Best of John Jakes (1977)

The Bastard was adapted as a television miniseries by Universal Pictures Television as the first offering of the highly successful syndicated package, Operation Prime Time (1978). The North and South trilogy was made into three miniseries on ABC in the 1980s and 1990s.