For some, it is the “sophomore jinx”. Others call it Second Novel Syndrome (SNS). And then there are those such as Mark Haddon who tell it straight. Contemplating the enormous success of his debut novel, Haddon said: “You want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up, isn't there?” Haddon's first novel, you may recall, was The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-Time. It was a hit. His follow-up, you may not recall, was called A Spot of Bother. It was not a hit - and Haddon's name was added to the long and distinguished list of those struck by SNS.

Now the publishing world is waiting to see whether Audrey Niffenegger can do what Haddon, Zadie Smith, and DBC Pierre all recently failed to - trump their rapturously received first novels by producing even greater second novels.

In 2003 there was no fanfare, no hype and no pressure when Niffenegger's first novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, was published. Yet it was one of those one in a million debuts: a brilliant, enrapturing book that became a smash - selling more than 1 million copies in the UK and nearly 1.5 million in the US. Six years down the line and Niffenegger's second novel is six months from its publication date. Already, the pressure is on.

Dan Franklin of Cape, her British publisher, will say only that he spent “lots and lots” on securing Her Fearful Symmetry. Cape, he added, has “unlimited” expectations for its success. “It's got everything,” he told The Bookseller. “It's a fantastic literary novel and unbelievably commercial.” Her Fearful Symmetry's cover, he divulged, will be by the designer responsible for Atonement by Ian McEwan.

In the US the publishers Scribner won the auction for Her Fearful Symmetry with a bid of $5 million. Nan Graham, the editor-in-chief of Scribner, said that Niffenegger “has defied custom and written a spectacular second novel, which is one of the hardest things to do in the universe”.

Just why writing a great second novel should be “one of the hardest things in the universe” seems to be down to two factors. First novels, goes the orthodoxy, are the fruits of years of thought shaped into words at the writer's leisure. Stephen Fry explained this when presenting the Encore Award - a £10,000 biannual literary prize for second novels. He said: “The problem with a second novel is that it takes almost no time to write compared with a first novel. If I write my first novel in a month at the age of 23, and my second novel takes me two years, which have I written more quickly? The second of course. The first took 23 years, and contains all the experience, pain, stored-up artistry, anger, love, hope, comic invention and despair of that lifetime. The second is an act of professional writing. That is why it is so much more difficult.”

Added to that relative urgency is the weight of expectation heaped upon an author's shoulder should his or her debut be as successful as The Time Traveler's Wife. Your fans, who loved your first book, are desperate for something equally as good - if not greater. Your publisher, who has spent big to secure the income that those fans will generate, is desperate for something equally as good - if not more marketable. And even if you do come up with something equally as good the literary critics - who are so often authors supplementing their income - might not be as willing to bestow you with sales-boosting raves as they were when you were a penniless unknown the first time round.

Simon Prosser, the publishing director of Penguin, once observed: “When you write your first book, you don't know what you're writing for or what awaits you. With the second book, if your work has been digested in the press, you think ‘Oh, is my writing really like that?' It's impossible to ignore the consciousness of your work being out there and people reading it and thinking things about it.”

Authors adopt different techniques to navigate themselves through the crisis of SNS. Donna Tartt's The Secret History was the most popular literary novel of the early 1990s. Working on her follow-up, she wrote: “I found the best way of coping with it was to write a completely different kind of novel, different use of language and diction, different narrative technique, different approaches to story. Because I was asking myself a completely different set of questions, the technical aspect kept me constantly engaged; it was almost like writing another first novel.”

Tartt may have tried to pretend that her second book was in fact her first, but the critics did not adopt the conceit - and compared The Little Friend unfavourable to The Secret History. Tartt's third is still awaited.

Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, published in 1988, was a bestseller. He wrote “several thousand pages” of a follow-up (about a baseball field-designing architect) before giving up on it altogether. Instead he wrote Wonder Boys - a novel about a novelist who can't finish a novel. It was a home run, scoring with the critics and the readers.

Some writers never overcome SNS. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison won the US National Book Award in 1953. Work on his next novel was slow, hindered by a housefire in the 1960s that he claimed destroyed several hundred pages of the manuscript. Years later, interviewed by Playboy magazine, Ellison was asked why things were taking so long. “Well, writing is a discipline,” he said: “It's not important how much you write.” And how, asked Playboy, does the novel look now? “Coming along fine, thank you,” said Ellison. That was in 1982. Ellison died in 1994 and his second novel, Juneteenth, was published two years later. It was unfinished.

Niffenegger has avoided that paralysis - publication is set for October. We shall have to wait until then to see if she conquers SNS, or is claimed by it. Either way, once Her Fearful Symmetry is on the shelves, Niffenegger can move on to her third untroubled. Unless, that is, she agrees with D.H.Lawrence. “Publishers,” Lawrence once said, “take no notice of a first novel. They know that nearly anybody can write one novel, if he can write at all, because it's about himself. A second novel's a step farther.”

“It's the third that counts, though...If [a novelist] can get over that ass's bridge he's a writer, he can go on.”

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy