Watch out, Harry Potter

It's a publisher's dream: playgrounds buzzing with children feverishly trading and borrowing books from each other, sitting huddled in groups reading and exchanging opinions and badgering their parents to buy the next in the series, even if that means ordering it on the internet from the States.

The signs are that A Series of Unfortunate Events - a cycle of 13 short novels - by American author Lemony Snicket is fast becoming the next big thing for eight-to-12-year-olds in the UK too, filling the gap left by Harry Potter since his last adventure, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was published almost two years ago.

So far, eight of the 13 have been published in the States, establishing Lemony Snicket as a best-selling author with sales there of more than four million. You might consider that a gold stamp. Not according to George Grey, childrens' book buyer for Waterstone's. "What sells well over there won't necessarily sell here," he says.

None the less, he immediately saw the potential of the books. "I only had to read one to realise it was going to be a best seller. Quite simply, it has mass appeal."

Young readers are certainly impressed. Rosie Goodhart, 11, at Hanover Primary in Islington, says: "We're all reading them. My friends borrow them off each other. The books are real pageturners, full of adventures." In Kingston, Toby Findlay, nine, has just read the first. "I heard about it from my friends," he says. "It was really good. I'm about to start the second." The first volume, The Bad Beginning, was published here by Egmont Books only 10 months ago, since when three more have followed. The fifth, The Austere Academy, comes out next week. The story revolves around the three Baudelaire siblings, Violet, Klaus and baby Sunny, who are orphaned at the start and battle against the wicked schemes of their only surviving relative, the evil Count Olaf, who is determined to inherit their vast fortune. There's a whiff of Cinderella about the way the children are mistreated, and the reader is constantly urged to close the book, for fear of what's to come. And Olaf is such a superb villain: "He was tall and very thin, dressed in a gray suit that had many dark stains on it. His face was unshaven, and rather than two eyebrows, like most human beings have, he had just one long one. His eyes were very, very shiny, which made him look both hungry and angry."

Valerie Rutt, a teacher at Yerbury Primary in Tufnell Park, reads the stories out loud to her class, and has watched as more children have taken to reading them in the playground. She likes the language, which she describes as "rich, complicated and stretching, in terms of vocabulary".

Quirky and original the writing may be, but the narrative remains essentially old-fashioned. The supposed unhappy endings aren't really unhappy, they are simply cliffhangers. Which is what makes you want to read the next, and the next.

Pascale Rees, 10, at Chiswick and Bedford Park, was the first to bring a copy into her school last September. Her teacher, Susie Stanley, says: "It went though the class like wildfire, because it appeals to children of diverse reading abilities, and it offers them a different type of story presented in an unusual way." She is just one of many teachers who seem genuinely taken aback at the idea that Lemony Snicket's burgeoning success might not be entirely the result of word-of-mouth. "No, I've certainly not been aware of any advertising," she says.

Yet Egmont, which paid an undisclosed but "modest" sum for the first six titles, has invested in a big promotional campaign, which it plans to sustain over the next few years - marketing matters like never before. Not only have the phenomenal sales of the Harry Potter books reversed the fortunes of publishers Bloomsbury, they have transformed the way other children's publishers sell their wares. As for the adult market, they are bringing out fewer titles, and backing them with eye-wateringly expensive campaigns.

The publicity has focused on Lemony Snicket's shadowy identity. He is the created alter ego of Daniel Handler, and becomes an increasingly important presence as the series continue. The climax will come in August, when Egmont publishes The Unauthorized Biography of Lemony Snicket.