A Northumberland author's crime series has ranked as the second bestselling of all time in the UK on Amazon.
LJ Ross's DCI Ryan series, which have been independently published since 2015, came second only to Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, outselling the Harry Potter, Games of Thrones, and Discworld novels, as reported by The Bookseller. Ross's novels are centred around detective Maxwell Finlay-Ryan cracking cases across the North East, with each book set at a different beauty spot in the region.
There are now 20 titles published in print, ebook and audiobook, with the latest in the series, Bamburgh, coming out in April this year. More than 7m her books have been sold since 2015, made all the more remarkable as she has turned down mainstream publishing deals and instead set up her own company, Dark Skies Publishing.
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LJ said: "This meant a lot to me as I’m the only independently published author on that list, without huge marketing spend or preferential placement in bookstores, this is all about readers spreading the word. I feel very grateful to them and considering I don't have a TV series to help with visibility, I’ll take being second to Lee Child!
"It's something that's uplifting for writers for writers who are out there and think: 'Can I make it?' Every single one of the others in the top 10 were from big five publishers who I turned down.
"You think to yourself: you can do it on your own if you have something that people enjoy reading and you put the work in. It's amazing to think how much support is out there!"
And the fact that Ross is placed so high on the list shows that the appeal of her books is reaches far beyond the North East - though she says that the region is her 'stronghold.' She added: "Obviously North Easterners love books about the area but the whole of the UK are loving them.
"I was shortlisted a couple of years ago for the dagger in the library award which came from librarians across the country, so it's not just a local thing. But I also have a lot of readers in the US and Australia, and the books are translated into different languages too."
Despite having sold so many books and being on the list, LJ said that she's still surprised by how much support she gets, with big queues of readers waiting to speak with her at literary festivals. She finished: "Every single time it's surprising to me, but if you start not being surprised, you get complacent.
"It's always a good thing to be very pleasantly surprised. I don't even know what to say, I just feel so lucky."
LJ Ross's next book, The Creek, is released in ebook on July 29 and in paperback on August 4. Fr more information, visit the Dark Skies Publishing website.
What is your favourite novel set in the North East? Let us know!
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