Quotes About Publishing

Every famous writer was once an unknown writer. If publishers never published new writers, they wouldn't be publishing anyone at all after a while.

The transition from unknown to known-in-publishing has been empowering but also challenging. It's an honor to know that people actually want to know what I think about certain issues, but I also have to be careful about what I say or, rather, how I say it. The Internet is forever, y'all.

In the publishing world, most editors are probably women. So I don't see the publishing world as a male-dominated one, especially within fiction.

In my long, long years toiling around the publishing industry, I've found that women simply don't stick to the writing with the same fervor that men do.

I know that 'The Accident' is not a completely accurate reflection of the reality of the book publishing world, which, like nearly any other business, consists mostly of people sitting in small offices staring at computer screens or reading or trying to stay awake in meetings.

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

The magazine was being started by a company that had no experience in business magazine publishing. It was a little difficult to get people to sort of buy into it and to join the staff, but we did.

I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.

There are two ways to look at my publishing career. One is that I'm a novelist churning out books, who is eight into a series; the other way is that I'm a cartoonist, just starting out. Most cartoonists have long careers: Charles Schulz drew Peanuts for 50 years.

The first accepted piece of writing is the most exciting. No other publishing experience matches it. Perhaps jaundice sets in, or expectations are raised, or one starts to think that one is better than is the truth.

According to my royalty statements, 'The Green Progression' sold 392 copies in hardcover.

'The Danish Girl' was published in 2000. Then it, too, would disappear, as most books do. It fell out of print almost everywhere. I wrote other books and, as an editor, worked on dozens more. Yet always, Lili stayed with me.

As large publishers turn into monopolies, and the MBAs who are running them - maybe editors used to run them before - are steadily tightening the screws, they feel more and more that they get to call the shots.

As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.

Meanwhile, in the realm of Something Lower, where books are but numbers in a series, the hacks grind out and the presses print the sf equivalent of Silhouette Romances. The sheer mass of Perry Rhodan lookalikes and fantasy-gaming disguised as books is awesome in much the same way that Niagara Falls is awesome: there is so much of it and it never stops.

What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

I love to walk into Borders or Barnes & Noble and see my books there. It's fabulous.

I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say.

I certainly think we're going to see more and more graphic novels and more illustrated novels.

Grand Central really didn't want me doing anything under my own name but the 'Kitty' novels.

I don't write romance novels.

Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.

Let every writer tell his own lies That's freedom of the press.

That's because humans are imperfect, so they make errors, which is why every book you've ever read has typos in it.