Everyone knows the secrets of the world’s non-celebrity authors. The obstinate scribblers who attend the nation’s writing conferences each year, clutching manuscripts with more dog ears than Crufts.

The poets whose publication owe more to vanity than sound commercial or literary judgement. And, according to Stephanie herself, the non-celebrity element also includes a spine-chilling 97 per cent of just about everyone else who ever got into print or has been brought to eBook.

“There’s only 70 UK authors who have sold over a million books since 1998,” she says.

She knows this because she has interviewed the living ones for her latest book, Celebrity Authors’ Secrets, as part of her mission in life to ensure more authors make more money.

Via a circuitous route which included training as a journalist, broadcasting for Sky, on the BBC and ITV And Anglian TV, gaining an MA from the prestigious University of East Anglia Creative Writing course, working for the Arts Council setting up literary festivals, teaching in a university at Oxford and eventually starting her own literary consultancy, Stephanie realised the awful truth.

Which is, namely, that you can be ‘incredibly intelligent and at the top of your profession’, you can write ‘amazing books’ and be a brilliant writer but that will all be for nothing if you don’t have a handle on the marketing.

Many of these people, Stephanie says, think that: “You just put a book on Amazon and it automatically sells, they don’t realise you have to promote it, work at selling it and you could have the best book ever but if you’re not doing anything to promote it, it’s not going to be sold.”

And if you feel that’s a little venal, consider that it was the great Dr Johnson himself who once declared that: “Only a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

Through the years Stephanie says she’s seen amazing books written by brilliant writers who become disillusioned because they don’t make money, yet there are other books: “Which are actually not the most amazing books, not terrible, but not amazing, which are doing very well because the authors work at marketing.”

Still not convinced? Stephanie fires out a volley of discomfiting statistics.

“The average print run of a book will be 3,000, and Nielsen figures show that the average book in its lifetime sells 200 copies,” she says.

Given that books like the Harry Potter series sell in their million this means – gulp – that some sell LESS than 200 copies.

So what are these secrets to selling a million that Stephanie’s wheedled out of her interviewees?

According to Sir Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld and seller of just the 85 million tomes: “Writing is a process of breaking yourself and everything you’ve done into little bits and pasting them on something else.”

His other advice? “Sit in a chair and keep on doing it.”

Alexander McCall Smith has sold more than 40 million copies of his books about the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and assorted Scottish ladies. His top advice is to persist and ‘not get fixated on your first effort’.

He is a big fan of discipline, important when you write five books a year.

For Jeffrey Archer, who has sold more than 270 million copies of his books, the advice is similar. He pens – by hand – 13 or 14 drafts and promotes his writing through Twitter, Facebook and by personal appearances.

And, like all of Stephanie’s interviewees, he advises the aspiring and practising writer to read non-stop.

It’s all very impressive and a long way from Stephanie’s upbringing, in the literary backwater of Merley, near Wimborne. She’s a former pupil of Broadstone First School and lived in Lytchett Matravers until her parents’ marriage broke down but she retains a deep affection for Dorset, visiting with her children.

“Mudeford, Lytchett, Poole, Bournemouth, we love all those places,” she says.

Given her lifestyle, running her literary consultancy and the Millionaires Bootcamp organisation, where millionaire women inspire and impart their wisdom to those who want to be like them, it’s amazing she has time for any of it.

Talking about her new book she says: “It’s not a lifestyle for the fainthearted.”

The same could apply to her.

  • Celebrity Authors Secrets – The World’s Greatest Living Authors Reveal How They Sell Millions of Books, by Stephanie J Hale