The product was everything, the right concept at the right time demanding huge advances and publicity budgets, no matter how inexperienced its author might be.In fact, perversely, inexperience became a positive asset Publishers were tired of writers who just wrote. Once that virginity was lost, without the expected level of sales, then editors began casting elsewhere.So, as the international publishing establishment gathers for the great annual works outing that is the Frankfurt Book Fair, there will be little surprise at the news that two of their number are currently offering pounds 600,000 to an unpublished author on the basis of a single chapter. They began to see that a novelist's public profile - young, good-looking, talented in other fields, preferably with a slightly rackety lifestyle - was every bit as important as any written words, possibly more so A first novel represented pure, unsullied potential. Staghunters at bay Sir: The chairmen of the staghound hunts (letter, 1 October) argue that the recent work done by Roger Harris demonstrates that the Bateson study is no longer a sound basis for banning deer hunting on National Trust land. As I understand it, the Harris study purports to show not that hunting produces no stress on the animals, but that the degree of stress was not as great as had been claimed by the Bateson study.

While publishing houses had never been particularly generous or scrupulous in their dealings with writers - the image of the tweedy, unworldly book- loving editor was always something of a myth - the idea of developing talent, book by book, had been central.Now a new, hard-eyed, short- term, market-led approach set in, and editors became beleaguered figures, fetching and carrying for their bosses in the sales department. Somewhere along the line, the biographical details which appeared in the front of his books included a revised bibliography, which excised the two books I had published, his third book being presented as his first. I recall feeling faintly hurt by this discreet rewriting of history before realising that Michael was right.The great sea change that the book industry underwent during the Eighties and early Nineties, during which publishers became bigger, hungrier and more fiscally responsible, altered for ever its relationship with authors. For his next novel, Michael Stewart changed publishers and genres, moving into the science-based medical thrillers in which he has since established a strong reputation. Since I had never read any of Carpenter's books, I felt, and was, entirely innocent of plagiarism, but he remained alert. Three or four years later, he found a story line in a later Ms Wiz book that bore a strong resemblance to one of his own plots. Just as he was reaching for the nearest lawyer, he discovered that my book was written two years before his; if any cribbing had taken place (which it hadn't), it had been his.But the tale of The 51st has another odd twist.

The idea of Britain becoming America's Airstrip One dates back, after all, to George Orwell. The coincidence merely points up what any experienced writer quickly discovers - that the common pool from which we all pluck ideas and stories is remarkably shallow.When I first created a witchy children's book character called Ms Wiz, the literary agent of my fellow author Humphrey Carpenter wrote an enraged letter to my publisher pointing out alleged similarities to her client's wizardy character Mr Majeika. Of course, Stewart's thriller was not called The 51st State; its title was The 51st. Libel lawyers can relax. Not for a moment am I suggesting that a distinguished senior journalist alighted upon an ancient paperback with silver gilt lettering on its cover and lifted its central concept. "Fact has a way of overtaking fiction," as he put it in an article to mark the publication of his novel. But then fiction has a way of overtaking other fiction in an even more striking manner.