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As Philip Kerr the author has an enviable track record in attracting big advances and film deals and he has

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As Philip Kerr, the author has an enviable track record in attracting big advances and film deals, and he has maintained that form in his new field: Scholastic UK and US paid about $1.8m for the trilogy, while DreamWorks bought the film rights.As Kerr and his agent, Caradoc King of AP Watt, set out to do these deals, they had many encouraging examples to inspire them. DreamWorks also has the rights to Lion Boy by Zizou Corder, the nom de plume of Louisa Young - also the author previously of adult novels - and her daughter Isabel Adomakoh Young; Puffin paid a six-figure sum for the publishing rights. Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl novels have been sold to publishers in 40 countries, and to the film studio Miramax. Fox has film rights to Inheritance, a fantasy trilogy by Christopher Paolini, who had a US hit with the first volume, Eragon, when he was still a teenager.Lian Hearn's Tales of Otori trilogy (Across the Nightingale Floor, Grass for His Pillow, Brilliance of the Moon), set in a mythical version of ancient Japan, was a six-figure purchase for Macmillan; Universal bought film rights. Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy (volume two, The Golem's Eye, is out next month), following the adventures of a djinni and wizard, won a six-figure publishing deal in the UK from Random House, and a $3m book and film deal in the US from Miramax.You may have noticed a predominant theme in these deals. "I get a lot of letters beginning, 'I'm writing a fantasy trilogy,' says Sophie Hicks, a literary agent whose clients include Eoin Colfer.

The model here is Philip Pullman and the His Dark Materials trilogy (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass). Pullman's books show how the best fantasy writing transcends terms such as "children's book": think of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, Watership Down, Harry Potter.Bloomsbury, JK Rowling's publisher, responded to adults' enthusiasm for Harry Potter by publishing editions of the novels packaged to appeal to an adult audience Scholastic followed suit with His Dark Materials. Macmillan is bringing out adults' and children's editions of Lian Hearn's Otori novels. This year's runaway publishing hit, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, is available in a children's edition from Red Fox and an adult edition from Vintage.These are "crossover" novels. One suspects that, since the successes of Rowling and Pullman, publishers have been desperate to find books that will have a similarly broad appeal. But they deny that they have become obsessive on this subject. "Absolutely not," says Philippa Dickinson, who runs Random House Children's Books (a stable that includes Jacqueline Wilson, Terry Pratchett, Jonathan Stroud, Christopher Paolini, Mark Haddon and Philip Pullman), when I ask her whether her editors are constantly on the lookout for crossover fiction.

"Everyone talks about 'crossover' fiction, but really you can only make it work if you have a very special book. Retailers don't like crossover novels very much otherwise, because they can't be sure whether to put them in the adults' or children's section - and they don't often want to put them in both."Kate Wilson, now running Scholastic and previously in charge at Lian Hearn's publisher, Macmillan, points out that many of the authors now winning large advances and enjoying unprecedented sales are writing squarely for a juvenile readership. One of Macmillan's best-publicised recent purchases has been Georgia Byng's novels about Molly Moon, an orphan with hypnotic powers; the company also publishes Meg Cabot's hugely popular The Princess Diaries novels You don't see many grown-ups reading them on the bus. After JK Rowling, the most successful children's writer in the country is Jacqueline Wilson, now the most popular author in the nation's libraries. There has been no talk of issuing adult editions of Wilson's Girls in Tears or The Sleepover Club.However, children's fiction has won acceptance and even kudos among adult readers - save one or two disenchanted observers such as Howard Jacobson, who has written in these pages of his desire to knock copies of the Harry Potter novels out of adult readers' hands. When it comes to financing, most homebuyers think only in terms of a 25-year repayment mortgage.

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