Quotes About Publishing

Until now, our discussion has focused on current books—those published within the past few years and usually available free only through Amazon for a limited time.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

I started off at the high level, in the slick magazines, but they didn't use my name, they used house names. Anyway, then I went downhill to the pulps, then downhill further to the comics.

Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.

The publishing world has been very slow to adapt to the digital world.

Both my own process and that of the publishing industry are just too slow to do anything other than play catch-up when it comes to anticipating change.

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money.

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn.

A friend of mine who is in the publishing business knew I was writing a book, and he said, 'Have you said anything yet about the good guy? Because I know you spend so much time with the bad guys.' Because they're fun. So then you have to make the good guy fun, in order to compete. That's the challenge.

Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. It became a publishing sensation. Lincoln was later wryly to remark to her: 'So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.' The South reacted with fury to her attack on slavery.

Publishing is a business and writing is an art. The two have to be crammed together despite the clearly different motivations behind them.

the world has become man's right and everything in it has become a right: the desire for love the right to love, the desire for rest the right to rest, the desire for friendship the right to friendship, the desire to exceed the speed limit the right to exceed the speed limit, the desire for happiness the right to happiness, the desire to publish a book the right to publish a book, the desire to shout in the street in the middle of the night the right to shout in the street.

I'd love to do a whole series of stories and have them collected into books.

Publishers love to compartmentalize, and Second Chance was not an easy novel to define.

After I published my first book, my sister, known as Kali Willows, began writing. She fell as in love with it as I did. She has a number of short stories.

But since printing came in no one wants illustrated works, they are happy with these cheap books with their ugly, square letters all squashed together.

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

I once caught him in the act of revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely; then said, "Well, obviously it's not finished.

What is one to make of the tirades of those who appear to know little of politics beyond their own invaluable right to publish their stuff and say what they think?

My first novel was published by the first publisher I sent it to. And so I've been learning as I go, and I find it now rather embarrassing that people beginning the Discworld series start with The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, which I don't think are some of the best books to start with. This is the author saying this, folks. Do not start at the beginning with Discworld.

And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up.

Good Omens was written by two people who at the time were not at all well known except by the people who already knew them. They weren't even certain it would sell.

Journal paywalls are an example of something that works in the reverse direction, making communication less open and efficient.