Stephen Leather - Writing Career

Writing Career

Leather began writing when he was in college; however, he "never managed to get beyond a few pages," and did not begin writing full-time until 1992. His first novel, The Payoff, was written while he was still employed at the Daily Mirror. It was published from the "slush pile" at HarperCollins. His second novel, The Fireman, was written while he was working as the business editor of the South China Morning Post.

Leather has lived in England, the Far East, the United States, and Ireland. He frequently travels to do research for his novels, many of which are set in the countries he has visited. In 2004, he visited Durham prison and Belmarsh prison in England to conduct research for his book Hard Landing. His books are the second most read by prisoners in the U.K., next to author John Grisham.

Leather became successful in the Amazon Kindle market in 2010. Amazon UK had opened an eBook store just prior to Christmas. Leather, anticipating that people purchasing eBooks would be looking for bargains, priced his books at the minimum price for independent writers (approximately $.99 USD) in order to get his books into the top ten. He then went to popular social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to market his books.

In 2011 Leather was the second bestselling UK author on the Kindle worldwide, beaten only by Lee Child. Leather sold 500,000 eBooks in 2011 and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the Top 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world.

Leather has come under criticism for his online marketing techniques. On 5 August 2012, journalist Nick Cohen said that Leather had created phony Twitter accounts in the name of another writer and then used those accounts to praise Leather's own books. Cohen said that in July Leather had boasted to other mystery writers that he generally promoted his books in a similar manner: "As soon as my book is out I'm on Facebook and Twitter several times a day talking about it. I'll go on to several forums, the well-known forums, and post there under my name and under various other names and various other characters. You build up this whole network of characters who talk about your books and sometimes have conversations with yourself."