'I wasn't an overnight success'
‘For me, that's what gave me my first break, so I wanted to encourage that. Many authors and illustrators find that leap of getting their first book published almost the hardest. I was thirty by the time I had my first book published. I wasn't an overnight success: How To Train Your Dragon was not by any means my first book, I wrote four or five picture books which were kind of moderately successful beforehand. I'd been working for five or six years as a writer with nobody paying any attention in particular, then How To Train Your Dragon came out! I hope publishers would have the patience nowadays to stick with somebody who didn't have a huge success.'
Cressida Cowell, author of How To Train Your Dragon in Bookbrunch