Bill Bryson describes his road to success
Bill Bryson is one of the most successful travel writers in the world, and he is often described as Britain's best-selling non fiction author, but he says his rise to the top is largely due to luck.
According to Bryson, he came along at the right time.
"I'm very lucky and that sounds like I'm being modest but I was very, very lucky," he told AAP in Sydney.
"It's not just a question of writing books that people will want to read and enjoy, but it's also having them come along at the right time and just click with an audience, and that is luck. It's purely luck."
Bryson, who is in Australia to promote the movie adaptation of his book A Walk In The Woods, is constantly fielding correspondence from wannabe travel writers and he has some basic advice for them.
"They all write to me and say `What do I have to do?' and I just think `Stop writing to me first and go and do it. Don't write to me about it'," he said.
But the author says it's not a career path with any guarantee of success.
"If you want to become wealthy and famous, it's a really foolish way to go about it. The level of success is tiny," he said.
Bryson has the talent to inform while also providing some laugh-out-loud moments in his writing. He's definitely skilled and talented, and there's no denying his popularity.
But as far as he's concerned, being talented isn't enough to make it as a writer.
"It's not like being a tennis star where you have all this talent and you're just the best there is. It's much more a question of being lucky. Just landing on the right spot," he said.
In fact, Bryson is not even sure talent is always necessary to make it as a writer and points to a wildly successful author, who he believes is successful without being particularly proficient.
"I don't mean to disparage the man, but look at Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), this is a man with very modest talents and yet he is one of the most successful people of all time because he just clicked at the right time," he said.
Bryson will continue his lucky streak later this year when he publishes his next book, The Road To Little Dribbling.
It's a revisit for Bryson, who is going back over old ground on the 20th anniversary of his examination of Britain, Notes from a Small Island.
The man from Iowa, who lives in Hampshire in the UK, is taking another look at his adopted home country.
"It's just me taking the mickey out of the British again," he said.
"Of course I had a wonderful time doing it."
With two decades of perspective, Bryson says Britain hasn't actually changed that much, but what has changed is his relationship with the country.
"In a lot of ways it's a very challenging country in terms of climate, and there's a lot of things I don't like about the place: I don't like the austerity they've inflicted on themselves at the moment, and yet I do really like Britain," he said.
Bryson describes the British as "crazy and eccentric" which is why he likes them and he believes the country's rich history is a massive draw card.
"Britain is a tiny place but it has so much packed into it. So much achievement that wherever you go, evry 500 yards, there's something significant that's happened in history there," he said.
But Bryson, who in 2000 wrote his witty examination of Australia, titled Down Under, says he would have settled here if he had discovered the country sooner.
"I love it here," he said.
*A Walk In The Woods opens in cinemas on September 3.
