Quotes About Publishing

I wrote 'Don't Look Back' in November 2011, and when I wrote the novel, it wasn't contracted, so there was a freedom in that - no expectations or anything like that. It was also my first contemporary novel I'd written and sold, which was to Disney/Hyperion in January of 2012.

My experience is that books take on a life of their own and create their own energy. I've represented books that have been sold for very little money and gone on to great glory, and I've seen books sold for an enormous amount of money published to very little response.

'X-Force' #1 sold 5 million copies. By default, the second issue dipped and did 1.3 million copies. But the cover of 'X-Force' #2 is Deadpool. It's not X-Force, It's Deadpool.

You have to remember that Shadow and Bone' was the first book I sold. And it was, in fact, the first book I ever finished writing, despite many attempts before that to finish a novel. And when I was writing it, I didn't know if anybody was going to buy one book, let alone all three.

I basically wrote five books with 'Night Soldiers,' called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript.

I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it.

There are a lot of global decisions that you can make as a co-publisher, and only publishers can make those kind of decisions. At the same time, there are some things you can do only as a penciler or creator. I want to keep my hands in both pots, so to speak.

I don't mean to beat a made-in-America drum, but I would be lying if I said it doesn't feel somehow right to be printing books in the U.S.

Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later

If somebody could write a book for people who never read they would make a fortune

Between 1928 and 1936, he published eight of Carax's novels.

Anyway, where Cabestany really made his money was in catechisms and a series of cheap sentimental novels starring a provincial heroine called Violeta LaFleur. Those sold like candy in kiosks. My guess, or anybody's, is that he published Carax's novels because it tickled his fancy, or just to contradict Darwin.

Ask your agent to set up a meeting with either your editor or the marketing department of the house or both so you can find out what they're doing, what they aren't, and what you can do to help.

'Something Borrowed' was initially titled 'Rolling the Dice,' but my editor said it sounded like a men's gambling memoir.

I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'

You're at the mercy of the editors' hands.

The hard thing about the book world is that you never know whether 10 people or a million people will find it interesting.

Agents will read unpublished work because they might make money, and that's their job. It isn't mine.

We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....

Nicht alles, was langwierig ist, ist langweilig.' (Thomas Mann to his prospective publisher, in reference to the MS of the novel Buddenbrooks - cited by the Thomas Mann Buddenbrookhaus in Lübeck).

In August 2012, Barton's Christian publishing house, Thomas Nelson, halted production of the tome, announcing that they had lost confidence in it. "There were historical details—matters of fact, not matters of opinion, that were not supported at all

A novel is a book with a lot of pages.

The author and publisher

I have a problem with censorship by the lawyer - by legal people by the publishing firm, and I may be changing publishers. They don't seem to want to take too many risks with living people.