Hundreds of people have been pictured queuing to see a best-selling author at a Kent bookstore.

A F Steadman, who is the author of the Skandar novels, is currently meeting scores of fans at her book signing event at Waterstones in Canterbury.

Such is the demand to see the author, people waiting to have their books signed have been split up into different groups and given times to come back and queue.

There have been four groups so far, with about 100 people queueing in each, while Steadman signs her third and newest book in the Skandar series.

It comes after a whirlwind two weeks in 2020 saw the then-first-time author from Canterbury bag a world record book deal and secure a movie contract with film-making giant Sony Pictures.

The children’s writer said she was living in dreamland after sparking a bidding frenzy among those desperate to acquire the publishing rights to her bloodthirsty unicorn series.

In the space of a fortnight, the former King’s School pupil declined other hefty offers and signed a “major” seven-figure deal for a trilogy of books with Simon & Schuster, one of the world’s biggest publishing firms.

Her debut middle-grade novelSkandar and the Unicorn Thief has been selected as the Waterstones Children's Book of the Year for 2022.

Acquired by Simon and Schuster in a world record-breaking deal, this is the first in a planned five-book series and rights have been sold in more than 30 territories, plus a film deal has been struck with Sony.

Dubbed “the new Harry Potter” by some, the story has been described as “thrilling, compulsively readable and relentlessly exciting”.

It is not the first time a popular author has visited the Waterstones store.

When promoting her second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 1998, J K Rowling used the shop phone to read her six-year-old daughter a bedtime story before she spoke to an excited group of fans.