Book Publishing Quotes

• As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

  Cyril Connolly

  Life, Fear, Publishing Books

  Enemies of Promise (1938) ch. 10

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• I think book publishing is fun, but I also know I've been very lucky.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Fun, Book, Thinking

  "The Writing Life". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. July 19, 2016.

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• I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

  Doris Lessing

  Book, Succeed, Process

  "Doris Lessing Says She Used Pen Name to Show New Writers' Difficulties" by Edwin McDowell, archive.nytimes.com. September 23, 1984.

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• Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

  Alexander Theroux

  Book, Editors, Agents

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• ... people in the newspaper industry saw the web as a newspaper. People in TV saw the web as TV, and people in book publishing saw it as a weird kind of potential book. But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing.

  Paul Ford

  Book, People, Magic

  4 Copy quote

• One of the greatest threats facing book publishing, and the entire country for that matter, is censorship.

  Bennett Cerf

  Country, Book, Matter

  4 Copy quote

• It really gets me when the critics say I haven't done enough for the economy. I mean, look what I've done for the book publishing industry. You've heard some of the titles. 'Big Lies,' 'The Lies of George W. Bush,' 'The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.' I'd like to tell you I've read each of these books, but that'd be a lie.

  George W. Bush

  Liars, Lying, Book

  "War no joke for Bush at correspondents' dinner". edition.cnn.com. May 2, 2004.

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• The Thieves of Manhattan is a sly and cutting riff on the book-publishing world that is quite funny unless you happen to be an author, in which case the novel will make you consider a more sensible profession-like being a rodeo clown, for example, or a crab-fisherman in the Bering Sea.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Book, Cutting, Sea

  7 Copy quote

• I thought, 'Okay, what's going to be my edge, and how am I going to define what I'm doing differently?' Once I had that key idea of the software developer as an artist, once I had that idea, a whole bunch of other ideas flowed from that, because I realized that I need to go study the music industry, I need to study the book publishing and Hollywood and figure out how they do things, why they do them that way, and then I need to borrow, and rearrange, the things that they're doing to fit my industry so that I can invent and create this new industry.

  Trip Hawkins

  Book, Artist, Keys

  "The 'I Am' Q&A". www.cnbc.com.

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• Book publishing was never a heaven "run by editors", and it is by no means today a hell "run by accountants." If our "sole interest" was "instant profit," not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn't be in book publishing at all.

  Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  Running, Book, Mean

  "A simple, mildly incredulous philippic". nielsenhayden.com. April 7, 2010.

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• I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.

  Seth Godin

  Running, Book, Thinking

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• Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of like-minded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of writers and to the diverse interests of readers. If money were their primary goal, these people would probably have chosen other careers.

  Jason Epstein

  Book, Jealous, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.

  David Frum

  Book, Thinking, Agency

  7 Copy quote

• It's interesting that the book publishing industry, on the iPad, has much more flexibility than the music industry had.

  Edgar Bronfman, Jr.

  Book, Ipads, Interesting

  4 Copy quote

• Australian SF book publishing has undergone a boom recently, and sometimes it's easier for new writers to sell a book to a local publisher first, which then makes a US edition more likely.

  Greg Egan

  Book, Conceited, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Book publishing would be so much easier without the authors.

  Dan Brown

  Book, Would Be, Easier

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• I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.

  Daniel Clowes

  Book, Thinking, Ships

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