Authors Electric

Doug Mildew Mr Adams! Come in, Mr Adams! Rick! Ricardo! Or how about, “the Richmeister”! ’Cos that’s what this book is gonna make you, my friend. Y’know, rich? Ah. Okay. You get it. You writers never miss a trick. Ritchie, have a cigar. Or maybe you’d prefer a carrot? Ha ha, just kidding. No, the other box. Those ones are kind of… mine. What can I say? You came to my rescue. “Animal stories!” I hear the market scream. “Won’t someone give us animal stories?!” And then along hops you , with your wonderful, genius, delightful, um, piece of… ah, here it is – ‘Watership Down’. And what do I find? It’s just busting with rabbits at the seams! You know what you are, Mr Richard Adams? A saviour. An honest-to-mercy lucky rabbit’s foot saviour. Because kids love bunnies, don’t they? Boy, do they love the cute fluffy bunnies. And you’ve got floppy ears coming out your… ears. I’ve got just one or two comments. Firstly. It’s a teensy bit long. You know, for this reading age gr...

The problem with writing a best seller is that then the pressure really is on to follow it up. Some authors do succeed: the seventh Harry Potter book reportedly had sales of 11 million during the first 24 hours, beating book six by 2 million sales. The series has come to an end, but eyes are once again on J K Rowling this month, with her first adult book due out on the 27 th.   Can’t say I’d like to be in her shoes as there are doubtless going to be a lot of people out there hoping to see her fail, and I suspect there will be a lot who run it down, regardless of its quality. Yes, trying to follow up a best seller must be a tough task. While Rowling has kept on writing and each of her books so far has outsold the previous one, some authors become literary one hit wonders - Wuthering Heights and Black Beauty spring to mind, although to be fair their authors had little chance for a second crack of the whip:   Anna Sewell died five months after publication of her masterp...