Lemony Snicket unveils his plan for four further books

BESTSELLING children's writer Lemony Snicket confirmed he is to write a new four-book series and revealed details exclusively to The Scotsman yesterday.

Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events – about the three Baudelaire orphans Klaus, Violet and Sunny, and the attempts of their evil uncle, Count Olaf, to claim their inheritance – has accumulated worldwide sales of more than 60 million in 41 languages.

Only JK Rowling can compete with Snicket's sales in America, where at one stage he occupied seven out of the top ten places in the New York Times bestseller lists for children's books. In Britain, his sales figures top six million, and paperback editions are due soon.

In an interview with The Scotsman yesterday, the San Francisco author Daniel Handler – Lemony Snicket is his nom de plume – revealed that he will be writing another four-book series, although it won't be a direct continuation from A Series of Unfortunate Events, which ended in 2006.

"It does have some overlap with the series, but it's not a continuation," he revealed. "There's nothing much more that I can say about it; it's still kind of foetal. I'm writing it this year."

Publication of the new series is expected to begin in 2012.

Handler/Snicket was talking after his first event in Scotland, which was attended by 800 schoolchildren at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh, organised by Scottish Book Trust.