Like the notoriously difficult second album, writing the follow-up to your hugely successful debut novel can also be somewhat hard to do.

For Taran Matharu, 24, the biggest challenge of writing the sequel to The Novice was the lack of an immediate audience cheering him on.

His first book was written on Wattpad - a social media site where people upload chapters of their novels and people can comment on them.

This time though, he's been by himself.

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"Writing is a very solitary experience a lot of the time," Matharu tells Newsbeat.

"By using Wattpad you can share your work and get a lot of encouragement."

After four months of writing and publishing his novel on the site, he hit a million reads, which he describes as "insane".

He contacted some literary agents to get some advice - that resulted in "six offers of representation".

Since then The Novice, the first book in the Summoner Trilogy, has been published around the world and translated into ten different languages.

He is waiting to hear back from his editors, who he sent book two to last month.

There's a real lack of diversity in authors and I think that's a problem because for me it's all about role models Taran Matharu

"I think it was a lot more difficult [to write the second book] in terms of motivation but the story itself didn't suffer. It became a solitary experience once again," Matharu says.

"There's an element of doubt there, where you're not entirely sure if what you've written is good because you're not having loads of people telling you this book is great or I really enjoyed this chapter.

"I guess there's more doubt."

This weekend he takes part in the Young Adult Literature Convention (YALC) in London.

Now in its second year, the event seeks to unite readers, writers and publishers, by hosting talks, signings and opportunities for networking with industry insiders.

"Young adult fiction - a lot of people don't really know what it is," says Matharu.

"They see it as an age group but it's really a genre that appeals to such a wide range of people and it touches on really important issues and it breaks a lot of taboos."

But while he is very much a fan of the genre, he also agrees that young adult fiction is a very crowded market at the moment.

"There's a lot of 'paint-by-numbers' books coming out and it can be difficult to differentiate yourself," he says.

"If you had to sum them in one sentence, a lot of them would sound the same. I feel like The Novice can stand out on its own two feet."

I think it was a lot more difficult [to write the second book] in terms of motivation but the story itself didn't suffer Taran Matharu

Matharu has spoken publically about experiencing racism in the past.

"There's a real lack of diversity in authors and I think that's a problem because for me it's all about role models," he tells Newsbeat.

"If you don't have many authors who are from a similar background [to readers] it sends a message that maybe that's not something for them, it's not something they should be getting involved in.

"It's very difficult for kids who don't see themselves in books and they can't find those role models.

"I think it just turns people from diverse backgrounds off reading if you don't have that representation."

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