Quotes About Publishing

The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors - there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own.

The conventional wisdom is that authors get only one chance in this world. If your first novel doesn't sell, publishers and bookstores lose interest, and your career stalls, barring an act of God or Oprah.

There were eleven publishers in New York City, and when it was all over, I think it went down to four or five, and then finally just the three of them, the Big Three.

Big publishers want you to change this and change that. I'd rather go to a little publisher - who needs the tsuris.

I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on - getting to the artist, getting to the publishers - you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that.

We are forced by the major publishers to include electronic rights in the contracts we make with publishers for new books. And there's very little we can do about that.

I try to keep all my novels in print. Sometimes publishers don't agree with me as to their worth.

The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too.

When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.

There are a lot of bottlenecks to getting published. Publishers are only one of them. Having the time is another one. Feeling entitled is another one.

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.

My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers.

I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got bought by a bigger firm. Story: in the end is the beginning, and in the beginning is the end.

Barnes & Noble is able to publish price-reduced non-copyrighted works not so much because it saves the 10 percent to 15 percent of revenue that would go to the gruel-eating authors, but because it saves the 50 percent that would go to the publishers.

The digital revolution has wrest a little control away from corporate publishers and white, male, middle-aged critics, but the financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.

Publishers like a good buzz, and negative responses sell books just as well as positive ones.

Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.

Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.

When my book was first sent out to publishers, my agent told me to buy a lot of ice-cream and wait. So I bought a gigantic amount of ice-cream, and huddled by the freezer eating it and shaking, hoping someone would like it.

The big publishers want someone they can send on the Jewish book circuit, somebody the old ladies can see marrying their granddaughters.

Prior to 2009, when publishers scoffed at the ebook market, they offered writers contracts which gave us half of the money they made off ebook sales.

With the big publishers, they publish 50 books and promote five.

When there are fewer and fewer publishers of scale, it's just not good for authors.