Some of the books I edited or wrote
at World International Publishing.

I applied for jobs with book publishing companies . . .

Most well-known publishing firms in Britain are based in London, and that's where I expected to get a job, but I didn't. Instead, I moved to Manchester to work as an editor for a company that published books about computers. I didn't meet any famous authors, but I did get to read lots of deadly boring books which didn't make much sense to me.

However, the good news was that I began to learn the important skills of editing, which is all about working with authors, illustrators, designers, and picture researchers, gently guiding books on their way to being printed.

It wasn't long before I changed jobs again, this time to work for another Manchester publisher - one that produced books about nursing. Again, no famous authors.

Then, in 1987 I joined the grandly-named World International Publishing Ltd., a children's publisher. At last, lots of famous authors - mostly dead ones such as Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Enid Blyton, and Roger Hargreaves, creator of the Mr Men and Little Miss characters. *

World International Publishing had been based in Manchester since it started in the mid-1940s. Two brothers had started the business by buying American newspapers that came into Manchester docks as ships' ballast. Inside the newspapers were American comics, which they took out and sold from market stalls in Manchester. They sold the unwanted newspapers to fish and chip shops. Millions of Manchester 'fish suppers' must have gone home wrapped in sheets from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Dibble Daily Digest (I made this one up, I think, but you get the point).

From small beginnings a large publisher emerged, and by the 1980s World International was a leading mass-market children's publisher. I soon found that children's publishing is so much more fun than working on books for adults. I edited (and wrote) all sorts of books, from sticker books and story books to annuals and encyclopaedias.

But all things come to an end. World International no longer exists. It was swallowed up by a bigger publisher (the Danish-owned Egmont Group), who changed its name, transferred all work to a London office and, in 2003, closed the Manchester office down. As it happens, I'd left the firm before its sad demise, moving on in 1994 to work for myself as a children's author.

It was a big step to take. Did it work? Read on to find out what happened next.

* I've written a short biography of Roger Hargreaves (Tell Me About Roger Hargreaves: ISBN 0237517582). It's out of print, but you should be able to find it in libraries. I've also written a fuller biography of him for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.