Authors who self-publish having spent some time trying to find a publisher for their book will be hugely encouraged by this week’s news of two authors who have received advances of £500,000 from Chicken House.

Barry Cunningham of Chicken House is renowned for ‘discovering’ J K Rowling when he was at Bloomsbury, although he has had several more successes since. ‘Chicken House has garnered itself a reputation for finding the quirky and original,’ said the Bookseller earlier this year.

When Roderick Gordon, investment banker, was made redundant he teamed up with his old friend from university, artist Brian Williams, to create their children’s novel. It’s been reported that he sold his house to self-publish a limited run edition of Tunnels, which went on to sell extremely well.

The pair have now been signed up by Cunningham to write a series of fantasy adventures featuring the teenager Will Burrows and set in a dark underground world below London. An often-quoted publishing anecdote is that when signing up J K Rowling, Cunningham warned the impoverished young single mother that she would be unlikely to make any money from Harry Potter!