Lynne Reid Banks Lynne Reid Banks Lynne Reid Banks (born 31 July 1929) is a British author of books for children and adults. She has written forty-five books, including the best-selling children's novel "The Indian in the Cupboard", which has sold over 10 million copies and has been successfully adapted to film. Her first novel, "The L-Shaped Room", published in 1960, was an instant and lasting best seller. It was later made into a movie of the same name and led to two sequels, "The Backward Shadow" and "Two is Lonely". Banks also wrote a biography of the Brontë family, entitled "Dark Quartet",
Debut novel publishers purchase rights to novels, especially debut novels, through literary agents, who screen client work before sending it to publishers. These hurdles to publishing reflect both publishers' limits in resources for reviewing and publishing unknown works, and that readers typically buy more books by established authors with a reputation than first-time writers. For this reason, literary communities have created awards that help acknowledge exceptional debut novels. In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only a small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of