Publishers Quotes - Page 12

• What we publishers think is that our function is to bring everything out into the open, on the theory that we have an adult population that knows values, or can learn them, and let them decide.

  Maxwell Perkins

  Thinking, Adults, Population

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• Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.

  Robert E. Howard

  Editors, Ideas, Age

  Robert E. Howard (2007). “The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 1: Volume 1: The Shadow Kingdom”, p.15, Del Rey

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• Freedom of the press, or, to be more precise, the benefit of freedom of the press, belongs to everyone – to the citizen as well as the publisher… The crux is not the publisher’s ‘freedom to print’; it is, rather, the citizen’s ‘right to know.’

  Arthur Hays Sulzberger

  Citizens, Benefits, Crux

  10 Copy quote

• The model of publishing is changing and its happening right now, but most publishers are so frightened, they just dont know how to embrace it.

  Tahir Shah

  Embrace, Frightened, Publishing

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• I am my brain's publisher.

  Philippe Starck

  Brain, Intellect

  33 Copy quote

• My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.

  Anne Lamott

  Sweet, Father, Reading

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• In the usual way I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of "normal" work. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.

  Tanith Lee

  Jobs, Children, Stupid

  4 Copy quote

• Many of the early greats of sf — Hugo Gernsback (publisher of Amazing Stories) in particular — saw themselves as educators. The didactic thrust of science fiction got the genre initially pegged as children's fare. It was seen, at its best, as an extension of school and, at its worst, as teenage wish fulfillment.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Children, Teenage, School

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• WikiLeaks is really a litmus test for those people who walk the talk in the media. How much will they really follow their protestations to be brave publishers, and how much do they really want to lick the boots of power? Well, you can tell by their engagement with us and what they do.

  Julian Assange

  Media, People, Brave

  "A Conversation With Julian Assange". Interview with John Cook, gawker.com. November 29, 2012.

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• I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.

  Nora Roberts

  Book, Writing, Loving What You Do

  6 Copy quote

• I guess I'm what you call a slush-piler. I just sent my manuscripts to the slush pile of publishers and hoped for the best. Over seven years, I was rejected seven times on three different books. The fourth attempt was picked up by a small publisher, and I still have great memories of staying up all night, talking to my brother and sisters (my dad called me at 2:30 in the morning because I was overseas).

  Markus Zusak

  Morning, Brother, Memories

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• Character is everything, especially these days when that's what publishers are asking for. Make sure that yours have child appeal. Also don't have a huge cast of characters. One or two is best, four, the maximum.

  Kirby Larson

  Children, Character, Two

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• No book, no matter how good, has a chance of reaching a large audience unless the publisher SEES the book's value.

  Richard Laymon

  Book, Matter, Chance

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• I didn't write professionally at first. It took me nine years to get anything published. At the beginning I mostly wrote picture books, which were rejected by every children's book publisher in America. The first book of mine to be accepted for publication was ELLA ENCHANTED, and not one but two publishers wanted it. That day, April 17, 1996, was one of the happiest in my life.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Children, Book, Writing

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• The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within a year or so be a rich and famous writer. Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume!

  Bentley Little

  Jobs, Years, Two

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• Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment -- there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Book, Fall, Intelligent

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• Publishers are humane men, and rarely commit crimes. Authors, however, are a hardened set, who usually perpertrate a felony every time they issue a book.

  Robert Barr

  Book, Men, Issues

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• I had a publisher who felt comics were just for little kiddies, so he never wanted me to use words of more than two syllables.

  Stan Lee

  Two, Use, Littles

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• Much as constitutional guarantees of press freedom do little good for prospective publishers if they do not have access to paper or ink, the right to aid in dying is strikingly useless if nobody is willing to help.

  Jacob M. Appel

  Dying, Ink, Guarantees

  "Big Sky Dilemma: Must Doctors Help Their Patients Die?". www.huffingtonpost.com. October 18, 2009.

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• Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers' high hardback margins essentially disappear.

  Barry Eisler

  Transition, World, Paper

  "Paper Earthworks and Digital Tides" by Barry Eisler, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 24, 2010.

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• I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level the transition to digital isn't something I welcome wholeheartedly.

  Barry Eisler

  Book, Suffering, Transition

  "Paper Earthworks and Digital Tides" by Barry Eisler, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 24, 2010.

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• All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.

  Mark Twain

  Successful, Reflection, America

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.73, Univ of California Press

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• In the long run, the quality of your work is all that matters. That is your only resumé. Be professional. Make sure your editor or publisher can always reach you. Do what's asked of you if your conscience can bear it.

  Mark Waid

  Running, Book, Editors

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• The idea that comics stores, distributors and publishers simply 'give the customers what they want' is nonsense. What the customers wanted they didn't get - and they left.

  Scott McCloud

  Book, Ideas, Giving

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• We'd love to do Space Ace 3D. It has a lot of potential. But, it is really up to the publishers.

  Don Bluth

  Artist, Space, Aces

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