Author Sophie Hannah: Book deals are great... but I've made millions from backing a start-up tipped by my daughter's singing teacher

Sophie Hannah is an author best known for her psychological crime novels, such as Haven’t They Grown.

The 55-year-old, who has sold more than five million books, has also written several mysteries based on Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot character, starting with The Monogram Murders in 2014. Her novels have been published in more than 50 countries.

The mother of two grown-up children, who also runs the Dream Author coaching programme for writers, lives in Cambridge with her husband Dan and their Welsh terrier Chunk.

I’m one of two girls and had a comfortable upbringing in Manchester, though my family were by no means wealthy.

My late dad was good at maths and cautious with money. In contrast, my mum [the children’s writer Adele Geras] had little to do with family money decisions and couldn’t understand numbers.

But, ironically, after my dad died in 2013 she followed the advice of a financial adviser and invested in the stock market – by doing so, she tripled her net worth. I learnt you could be too cautious financially.

My husband and I took out a discount mortgage to buy our first home, a townhouse in a lovely new development in Bingley, West Yorkshire, for £115,000 in 1999.

But we didn’t realise that the mortgage would go up after six months! I was working only one day a week, and Dan wasn’t earning much, and I feared the only way to keep a roof over our heads might involve selling a vital organ!

Thankfully I discovered we could transfer our mortgage to a different provider. That saved the day.

I’ve signed three book deals worth £1million or more, but I don’t think of it as silly money – I just think of it as amazing.

My first million-pound deal was for five psychological thrillers, starting with A Room Swept White [in 2010]. Then another followed immediately afterwards, for four more books.

It has to be 2021, when my husband and I cashed in our shares in CMR Surgical, a British start-up [that makes surgical robots]. The scientist who had the idea and founded the company was the husband of my daughter’s singing teacher.

That was a real game-changer financially, so we treated ourselves to a holiday home – a £600,000 stone farmhouse on the Cornish coast dating back to 1724 – which we escape to whenever possible.

Signing a large book deal is great but it could be a one-off, so you can’t fritter away the money.

When I signed my first million-pound book deal in 2008 I treated my family to a holiday at the Vila Vita Parc luxury resort on the Algarve.

It cost the best part of £10,000, but was worth every penny. It’s become a home from home, and we go back there every year. It has three swimming pools and a private beach, which is my idea of heaven as I’m a swimming addict.

Spending around £100,000 on sending my children to a fee-paying secondary school in Cambridge that was terrible. The teachers behaved appallingly on a regular basis. On one occasion a teacher saw my son letting himself into our home and called out: ‘You don’t deserve to live somewhere so nice!’

Still, I like to think that in every money mistake, there is a learning opportunity. I’ve co-written two murder mystery musicals that feature a terrible school, and one is now a movie, The Mystery Of Mr E.

Investing the £35,000 seed capital in CMR Surgical in 2013. It was behind a scientific product called Versius, surgical robotic arms that surgeons can operate remotely, to perform laparoscopic [keyhole] surgery.

Eight years later, the company was worth £3.5 billion. My husband and I sold all our shares,which gave us complete financial freedom – we made millions from it.

I still want to work, though. I love what I do and have no plans to stop writing or coaching.

It’s sometimes worth taking a chance on an investment because if you win, you can win big.

I will leave all my money to my children.

Sheer blind luck plays a huge part in creating wealth.

Many talented, hard-working writers haven’t made money from it. I’ve been very lucky, and I’d never want to send a message to my children of, ‘I want to keep my own good luck, but I don’t think you deserve any.’

I think people who do that miscalculate the ‘I earned it’ to ‘I had brilliant good fortune’ ratio.

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I’ve got a private pension via a company I own, but I’ve also got a big investment portfolio and I think of that as my main pension equivalent.

Yes, my husband and I live in a tall, five-storey Victorian townhouse in Cambridge which cost £685,000 in 2010 but is now worth £1.5million. We also have the holiday home in Cornwall.

I’d cut taxes on businesses as much as possible, and make it easier for entrepreneurs to get funding for start-ups, in order to get the country making things again and creating real value.

Doing everything I can to help my children, who are now young adults, because it’s so much harder for that generation to get jobs and on to the housing ladder.

Sophie’s latest book, Work Experience (Carcanet Press), a collection of poems and plays, is out now. For info on her coaching programme visit: dreamauthorcoaching.com.