Quotes About Publishing

It seems to me that the novel as a medium has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. By which I mean: there are a lot of novels published, but the vast majority of them don't represent major contributions to the medium.

The vast majority of writers out there, they finish their books, and no one cares whether their book is late or ever comes out at all. And then it comes out, and two reviews are published, and it sells 12 copies.

I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.

As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.

I can understand the allure of a venerable Big Six imprint, of a shot at the New York Times list, of a publisher-sponsored book tour, of seeing your hardbacks in bookstores and your paperbacks in supermarkets.

I guess there's a sort of cycle with writing books. There's all the researching and then the imagining and writing - which is the real job - and then there's always a period when the book comes out and you have to lift your head and venture out.

The first version of The Beautiful Room Is Empty was the first mss. I'd ever submitted to New York editors.

Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison.

Note to aspiring writers: This is actually not that many rejections in the grand scheme of things. I know published writers whose rejection count is in the triple digits. Never give up. Never, never, never give up.

An e-book can be produced and distributed at near zero marginal cost.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

One would always like things to get other performances. With the lack of publishing here it's almost impossible to have an orchestral work done abroad because people simply don't know they are there.

The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.

Even though I've reached retirement age, I still plan to work - writing my investment newsletter, speaking at conferences, publishing books, and producing conferences like FreedomFest.

There are so many people who write really interesting work and try super hard and still don't get published.

One of the most difficult things for a writer in this business to accept is the uncertain fate of one's work.

The illustrators work so much harder on the books than the writers do. I mean, that's so much work doing what they do, and it's terrible for them.

People wanted to get me published, and my early work was so weird that they weren't getting anywhere. I thought, okay, I'll do something that's just a tad more normal.

The e-book revolution has made it very easy to pay writers a good deal less than what their work is worth. I do strongly believe that we writers ought to hold out for much better royalties.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.

Publishers have in-house editors, but I hire my own before I submit the work to publishers. They appreciate it and I feel more confident about the material.

My work has taken me from historical research to involvement in electronic publishing ventures to the directorship of the Harvard University Libraries.

I have been blessed to have the same editor and work for a great publishing house.

[Mid-list writers are now] less greed on the part of both publishers and chain booksellers. It is easier for them to publish and sell only blockbusters and leave the real work to small presses.