SHE is best known for her succession of bestselling gritty crime novels, but financial success is not a work of fiction for Val McDermid.

The Fife-born author’s personal company to channel her book royalties has made more than £2.2 million.

Figures from McDermid’s CJMB Limited show it had total assets of £2.6m and made a profit of £2.2m for the 12 months up to October last year.

McDermid, who set up the company in 2001, has sold more than 10 million copies of her books.

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In addition, her series about the psychological profiler Dr Tony Hill has been turned into the successful ITV drama Wire In The Blood.

Latest accounts filed at Companies House reveal the firm is valued at about £2,283,286, more than £30,000 up on the previous year’s figure.

The company’s income has more than doubled in the last six years.

McDermid, 61, from Kirkcaldy, had to persevere to achieve success. Her first novel Report for Murder was published in 1987 but she did not give up her day job as a journalist until 1991 when she finally secured a two-book deal.

She has admitted she would have been a failed novelist if she were starting out today because the publishing industry no longer allows for slow- burning careers.

She said: “If I published my first three novels now, I wouldn’t have a career because no-one would publish my fourth novel based on the sales of my first three.

“When I started you were still allowed to make mistakes. You got to make your mistakes in public, in a way.

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“I think the world was a more forgiving place when I started my career, in the sense that we got time and space to develop as a writer.

“That wouldn’t happen now. No-one will say, ‘Write half a dozen novels and find yourself’.”

McDermid is a director of her home-town football club Raith Rovers.