Goodreads asked Alan Garner:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Alan Garner Unless you have something, you MUST say, I wouldn't recommend becoming a writer. Writing is a field that will break your heart. Most people cannot earn a living as writers. On the other hand, I am currently writing a book which I plan to call SECRETS OF A MILLION-SELLING SELF-PUBLISHER, which will teach you how to become a bestselling author even if you are not a great writer and even if you do not have any connections. For example, if you have a unique idea for a book or you have a unique background, you can perhaps find someone who is famous or well-known to become your co-author. This would enable you to sell 10 or even 100 times as many books as you could sell with your unfamous real name. I have done this myself. I took one of my American books that was just selling an average number of books, and I teamed up with Allan Pease, a famous Australian celebrity/writer/keynote speaker. Together we put together an Australian version of my US book on conversation skills. The book hit #1 on the charts in Australia and remained there for a long time. That book managed to sell over one million copies thanks to Allan being on the over and doing lot f publicity on behalf of the book. One million books is approximately one million more than I would have been able to sell had I tried to do it on my own, with my unfamous name. So if you can find someone to become your co-author who is famous, I guess it would work. But very few people would be able to do that. You would have to have some special knowledge, as I did with conversation skills. Or you would have to have a unique idea fr a book that would convince someone famous to become your partner. I know of someone who deliberately wrote a brilliant and provocative Master's dissertation, knowing that he would later be able to use it to get someone famous to become his partner in writing a book. But I doubt the average person could or would go to such extremes.

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