Quotes About Publishing

I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.'

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.

The wheels of publishing never slow down.

Having a book published whenever is a huge honor.

Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are.

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.

I remember going into a bookshop, and the only book I saw with a black child on the cover was 'A Thief in the Village' by James Berry, and I thought, 'Is this still the state of publishing?' Then I thought, 'Either I can whine about it or try to do something about it.'

When I was saying, 'White people go to hell,' I never had trouble finding a publisher. But when I say, 'Black and white unite and fight, destroy capitalism,' then you suddenly become unreasonable.

Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, 'We would like to publish your book.' I said, 'Well, I don't have a book,' and they said well it's a well known fact that you have kept diaries.

That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment.

After you've written a story, the thing to do is sell it. Sounds simple, and it is, if one will follow certain basic principles of salesmanship.

One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print.

Print and digital comics will always coexist.

DC used to print up all of their pages, they were the only company that did it.

I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

One thing I often talk about in my business is that an eBook is not like a print book: it's very, very different. It's organic. It's changing.

The most painstaking phase comes when the manuscript is set in 'type' for the first time and the first proofs of the book are printed. These initial copies are called first-pass proofs or galleys.

It's so easy to print in the Midwest. You're saving months in shipping and customs, so we have started printing a number of books there.

Most of my books have caused distribution and printing problems in the past.

My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they're able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home.

We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way.

I actually don't know how magazines are produced, I'll be honest with you. I have no idea.

E-books, which made their debut in the 1990s, cut costs even more for both consumer and producer, though as the Internet expanded, those roles became confused.

I love bookstores and booksellers. In my novel 'Dirty Martini,' I thanked over 3,000 booksellers by name in the back matter.