Publishers Quotes - Page 18

• An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals.

  Jack Kirby

  Humble, Artist, Simple

  Interview with Gary Groth, www.tcj.com. February 1990.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The artist is the lowest form of life on the rung of the ladder. The publishers are usually businessmen who deal with businessmen. They deal with promotional people. They deal with financial people. They deal with accountants. They deal with people who work on higher levels. They deal with tax people, but have absolutely no interest in artists, in individual artists, especially very young artists.

  Jack Kirby

  Artist, People, Ladders

  Interview with Gary Groth, www.tcj.com. February 1990.

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Book, Hopeful, Bangs

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had an idea for a medical conspiracy thriller. Since it was non-horror, I didn't want the publishers and editors bringing a lot of baggage - my history as a genre writer in the SF and horror fields, for instance - to the novel when they read it. I wanted them to consider the book solely on its own merits. So I called myself Colin Andrews. I was tired of seeing my books at floor level. Not that Herman Wouk and Phyllis Whitney and William Wharton are bad company, but I wanted to be up at eye level for a change, where people with bad backs could get a chance to see my books.

  F. Paul Wilson

  Book, Eye, Tired

  4 Copy quote

• I just hope that readers and publishers continue to appreciate good writing and good storytelling in all their various forms. And I hope that people continue to read books, even though we have so many other options for entertainment.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Book, Writing, People

  4 Copy quote

• I started with small-press publishers, who were willing to publish all sorts of forms. I didn't move to the larger presses until they knew what they were getting in for.

  Lydia Davis

  Moving, Form, Willing

  The New Yorker Live Chat, www.newyorker.com. December 16, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As for the multiple editions, in the case of a truly great writer - Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Proust, someone with a canon - there is often a "variorum" edition of the work that presents its variants. I think publishing most other writing that way would be impossible, economically, for publishers, and very ill-advised for authors.

  Judith Thurman

  Writing, Thinking, Way

  "Ask the Author Live: Judith Thurman on Laura Ingalls Wilder". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. July 31, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks.

  Richard Curtis

  Book, Writing, Faster

  8 Copy quote

• Your turn Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do. If you lived in that world, what would you do? Go. Do that.

  Seth

  Boss, World, Imagine

  6 Copy quote

• The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers.

  Richard Curtis

  Depressing, Real, Anxiety

  4 Copy quote

• By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. - have ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled.

  John Taylor

  Teacher, Children, College

  6 Copy quote

• Madly, futilely, I wrote novel after novel, eight in all, that failed to find a publisher. I persisted because for me the novel was the supreme literary form: not just one among many, not a relic of the past, but the way we communicate to one another the subtlest truths about this business of living.

  William Nicholson

  Past, Eight, Way

  "A class divide" by William Nicholson, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But every fool describes, in these bright days, His wondrous journey to some foreign court, And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise,-- Death to his publisher, to him 'tis sport.

  Lord Byron

  Sports, Journey, Demand

  Lord Byron (2013). “Don Juan”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• At forty my faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening, leaving me unable to write my memoirs with a fitting and discreet inaccuracy, or, having written them, unable to carry them to the publisher.

  James Thurber

  Flower, Writing, Leaving

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.149, Library of America

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.

  Paul Johnson

  Evil, Crooks, Toss

  9 Copy quote

• Critics have found in the narrative a veneer of erudition that cloaks nothing more than a James Bond-style romp, albeit a highly addictive one. His publisher has described it as 'a thriller for people who don't like thrillers'. One newspaper put it thus: 'It is terribly written, its characters are cardboard cutouts, the dialogue is excruciating in places and, a bit like a computer manual, everything is overstated and repeated - but it is impossible to put the bloody thing down.

  Dan Brown

  Character, People, Style

  "Dan Brown: Veni vidi da Vinci". www.theguardian.com. December 12, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits.... Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters? If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell, it is this society of Loyola's. Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum.

  John Adams

  Religious, Kings, Men

  "The Manner Is Ordinary" by Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., Ph.D., www.huffingtonpost.com. September 22, 2015.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher? Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.

  Bill Watterson

  Movie, Character, Rights

  4 Copy quote

• Books are savaged and careers destroyed by surly snots who write anonymous reviews and publishers can't be bothered to protest this institutionalized corruption.

  Warren Murphy

  Book, Writing, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• All my writing-life people kept telling me that I should stop writing short stories and start writing novels: my agent, my Israeli publisher, my foreign ones, my bank manager - they all felt and keep feeling that I'm doing something wrong here.

  Etgar Keret

  Writing, People, Feelings

  "Suddenly: An Interview With Etgar Keret". Interview with Courtney Becks, www.raintaxi.com. Summer 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had a talk with the president of my publisher, and he averred that e-books are dropping off . So I wonder if the potential advantages are really going to happen as quickly as they ought.

  Rick Moody

  Book, President, Wonder

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've never signed a contract, so never have a deadline. A deadline's an unnerving thing. I just finish a book, and if the publisher doesn't like it, that's his privilege.

  Marchette Chute

  Book, Privilege, Contracts

  4 Copy quote

• We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.

  Charlotte Cotton

  Civilization, Editors, Photographer

  "Charlotte Cotton: Surveillance Revisited". Interview with Nicole Miller, www.guernicamag.com. June 15, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't use the term 'miracle' lightly. I don't believe in God, or reincarnation, or destiny, or the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

  Rick Reynolds

  Believe, Destiny, Miracle

  4 Copy quote

• Never submit an idea or chapter to an editor or publisher, no matter how much he would like you to. Writing from the approved idea is (another) gravely serious time-waster. This is your story. Try and find out what your editor wants in advance, but then try and give it to him in one piece.

  John Creasey

  Writing, Editors, Ideas

  8 Copy quote