ONE of Spain's best-known 'serious chick-lit' authors has announced she will hang up her pen for a few years as more copies of her books are illegally downloaded than sold.

She announced on her Facebook site that she intended to stop writing 'for a few years' or 'at least until some sort of controls are put in place'.

“I don't really fancy spending three years working like a trojan on a novel, only for them to be illegally downloaded instead of copies being bought. If I wanted to actually give novels away, I'd hand out copies to my friends,” stated Etxebarría on her profile page.

“It's a simple matter of not being able to start writing another novel because I need to eat and to live.

“Okay, my situation isn't anywhere near that desperate, but neither can I live off fresh air or carry on doing so for the rest of my life. It's time I started looking for a job.”

Lucía Etxebarría, who was born in the Basque Country but now lives in Madrid after a spell in Altea (Alicante), covers all walks of life and all social issues in her novels and short stories, including alcoholism, pregnancy, eating disorders, lesbianism, adoption, divorce, depression and juvenile crime.

Whilst they mainly centre on romance, Etxebarría's easy-reading but meaty novels see a colourful array of characters intermingle, go off the rails, work, play and travel, all against a panorama of modern-day 20- and 30-something angst.

Some of her best-known novels and short story collections include Beatriz and the celestial bodies, Love, curiosity, prozac and doubts, We who are not like all the others, A love story like any other, A balanced miracle, Cosmophobia and The truth is a moment of what is false.

Many of Etxebarría's works have been translated into other languages, including English, of which she is an accomplished speaker.

Among her many credits is that of co-authoring a biography of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, in English.