JoJo Moyes: I was about to quit - then wrote a novel that's sold 14million copies and inspired a film starring Emilia Clarke
In an interview with Sunday's Desert Island Discs, the author said: 'I was broke at the time and I was feeling quite depressed because I thought my writing career was coming to an end.'
By CHRIS HASTINGS
Published: 21:57 GMT, 27 December 2025 | Updated: 22:08 GMT, 27 December 2025
Her romantic novel Me Before You sold a staggering 14 million copies and inspired a hit film starring Emilia Clarke. But author JoJo Moyes has revealed she almost quit writing altogether before the book came out in 2012 because she was frustrated with her lack of success.
In an interview with Sunday's Desert Island Discs, the author said: 'I was broke at the time and I was feeling quite depressed because I thought my writing career was coming to an end.'
'I had written eight books by then and none of them ever troubled the bestseller charts, My then publishers were very game, but they were losing faith in me and what to do with me...I knew I was in the last-chance saloon when it came to my publishing career.'
Me Before You is a romantic novel which charts the relationship between Will Traynor, a young man who is a quadriplegic following a motorcycle accident and Louisa Clark, who is hired as his personal assistant.
Ms Clark tries to help Traynor find a new reason to live after she discovers he planned to take his own life.
Ms Moyes, 56, began writing the book after she heard a news story about a rugby player who had been left similarly disabled.
She was initially shocked to learn that his parents had agreed to take him to Switzerland so he could end his life at the Dignitas clinic. But her attitude to the story began to change after she looked into it.
The mother of three said: 'I was so shocked by this story. I couldn't understand how a parent could agree to do that with their child.
In an interview Desert Island Discs, Jojo Moyes said she almost quit writing after feeling depressed because she thought her career was ending
Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin in a scene from the film Me Before You
'I felt very judgmental... then I started to read up more [and] realised, like most things in life, it wasn't black or white, it was many shades of grey. If fascinated me and I decided to write a story based on a similar premise.'
Ms Moyes said her then-publisher was 'lukewarm' about the novel but fortunately the idea was picked up by a rival firm. She said she had a tendency to quit a novel after writing the first 20,000 words, and had considered giving up with Me Before You. But her friend and fellow novelist Sophie Kinsella, who died earlier this month, urged her to continue.
Ms Moyes said she had been so used to failure as a writer that it took her years to come to terms with the success.
She added: 'I knew I loved this book... But I had no idea it was going to resonate in the way that it did 'It just achieved this momentum.
I kept thinking 'well, it's sold 3,000 copies this week, surely that's it'... and it just kept snowballing and then suddenly it was a bestseller in Brazil, in South Korea and then America and my whole life changed.