Quotes About Publishing

Some of the biggest changes that have happened are behind the scenes, in the way we produce the magazine. E.g., much of our production has been brought in-house via desktop publishing.

I've been associated with Macmillan for over 45 years. I'd like to thank them for their continued commitment to my backlist and I look forward to continuing to work with them as they publish my next novel, 'Vicious Circle' in 2013.

Anyone can publish a book. Anyone can be an author. But, not everyone has the authority, authenticity or expertise.

Publishing a book does not make you and authority or an expert. Authorship does not equal authority.

Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience.

I've found most authors have the wrong mental picture of the process. Instead of a sprint, publishing is more like a marathon. Slow, steady and consistent action will get you your audience and success.

From my 25+ years in publishing, I've observed that selling books does not occur without the author taking action.

Sell through multiple channels. Readers like plenty of choice when they go to purchase their books. Your book should be available in a variety of formats such as every type of Ebook paperback, hardcover and audiobook.

Publishing in magazine is an under-used route for authors to reach readers. As a former magazine editor, I understand the power of reaching the audience…With one article, I have reached millions of people.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.

There's a cardinal rule in book publishing that applies equally to brain surgery and auto mechanics: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Since people are still buying the original Where Is God When It Hurts?

But seeing those words that were first written, and scratched out, and rewritten again in print and bound into a book, I know that I love the process of writing and publishing. To take a thought and work on it, to render it into the clearest form possible, and then to send it out into the world—this is work so precious and so joyful that I am not surprised that men have kept it to themselves.

Every scholarly history that was written before 1920 was written by a man who had been taught by a man, whose thesis would be examined by a man, and whose book would be published by a male publisher and reviewed by a male critic. This could not change until women were admitted to universities and colleges. When women could train as historians in the universities, they could for the first time research, write, and publish scholarly history.

I have, as may be apparent, not much respect for editors as a class.

If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you'd have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large.

Three million hardcovers flew off shelves. Film rights sold in a frantic auction.

His second novel spent one week on the bestseller list, sold forty thousand copies

His third never made the list, sold fifteen thousand copies, and was savaged by critics.

Agents don't sell books, good writing does. Plotting and characterization are what interest an editor. Agents negotiate contracts, but they don't sell books.

Nowadays people rush into print before they've even finished the proof.

Write the unpublishable...and then publish it.

OUTLANDER A Delta Book PUBLISHING HISTORY Delacorte Press hardcover edition published 1991 Delta trade paperback edition/July 2001 Published by Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc.

Why wouldn't - how couldn't - an author care about how his or her books look?

Amazon can't be all good or all bad. I don't think that everything they do is evil; they've given a lot of authors access.