He is one of the world’s most successful crime writers, selling more than 100 million copies of his novels and short stories worldwide. Now Lee Child is planning major television adaptations of his Jack Reacher books after fans complained to him about Tom Cruise’s portrayal of the larger-than-life hero in two Hollywood movies.

Reacher, a private investigator and drifter, is described in Child’s novels as physically towering, measuring in at 6ft 5in . Cruise, however, is said to be only 5ft 7in.

“I’ve got tens of thousands of letters saying they didn’t like Cruise because he’s too small, basically,” said Child. “Part of Reacher’s appeal is that he’s very intimidating. Even without doing anything, if he walks into a room, people are a little bit uneasy. It was felt that, for all his virtues, Cruise didn’t represent that. So the readers were cross from the beginning.”

Child hopes that a deal will be signed by November for productions that will devote between 10 and 12 hours to each book. Asked about the cast, he said: “That’s the great thing about television. It’s much less star-driven than feature films. So it doesn’t need to be a so-called A-list guy.”

Tom Cruise in a scene from Jack Reacher. The actor proved too diminutive for tens of thousands of fans of the novels. Photograph: Karen Ballard/AP

In one letter after Cruise’s portrayal in Jack Reacher (2012) and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), a fan wrote that most readers picture Reacher as “tall, rugged, etc (not that half-pint from the movies)”.

Fan letters are part of a vast archive of correspondence, notes and manuscripts that Child is making available to the public for the first time. It will be announced this week that he is transferring everything to the British Archive for Contemporary Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The archive boasts the literary holdings of Doris Lessing, Malcolm Bradbury and JD Salinger, among others, while the university has an international reputation for creative writing through its MA, with Ian McEwan among its alumni.

Commenting on why he is giving the collection to the UEA, Child said: “It seems to me, from an author’s point of view, tremendously arrogant to imagine that anybody’s going to find it interesting … it wasn’t something I thought I would ever do. But East Anglia does have a reputation as a great university for writers and they … were convinced that it would be useful.”

He has sent more than 40 enormous boxes filled with papers spanning his career. There is so much material it will take more than a year to catalogue.

Justine Mann, archivist at UEA, said: “For the first time, creative writers, researchers and scholars of literature will have access to material that allows them to trace Child’s writing process and, through textual analysis of initial and subsequent drafts, identify some of the secrets behind his incredible success.”

Child’s success as a writer has enabled him to buy homes in New York, England and the south of France. Photograph: Dan Callister/Rex/Shutterstock

Coventry-born Child, 63, became a global publishing phenomenon after his first Reacher book in 1997. The 23rd novel in the series, Past Tense, will be published in November. The others have been translated into 49 languages. Yet he did not start writing until he was 40, after being made redundant from his 18-year career in television: “The real drama in my story is having been fired from Granada. That’s the real rags-to-riches part of it. I managed to do something afterwards … I’m the lucky one.”

Child said he had not held anything back from the archives: “With a serious institution like UEA, which does teach the nitty-gritty of writing, you can’t present a curated archive because it would necessarily give the wrong impression.”

The archive includes a rejection slip from a literary agent, who will no doubt be kicking himself or herself for failing to sense his potential.

There is also Child’s introductory letter to another literary agent, Darley Anderson, who did recognise his talent: “I’m writing to you because I’ve got a novel to sell. It’s a thriller, lots of action and suspense, an attractive main character, a hard enough edge to make it competitive and a ‘big’, epic focus to the plot.” Anderson requested more chapters the same day.

The archive includes notebooks in which Child jotted down scenes or observations. UEA’s Mann said: “There are chapter plans, and word/page counts, lists of potential titles for each book, with the eventual title often one of the last to emerge.”

The archive reflects that Child’s fans include former US presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. In one letter, a woman complained that her husband would rather go to bed with a Jack Reacher novel.

Highlights of Lee Child’s archive will be exhibited at UEA from 14 September as part of the Noirwich international crimewriting festival in Norwich.