Publishers Quotes - Page 6

• [Mark] Twain was a publisher. He published General Grant's Memoirs (a big success) and had a hand in the publishing of many of his own books. He would, I think, be very keen about the question of how a book would sell.

  Hal Holbrook

  Book, Thinking, Hands

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• I am my brain's publisher.

  Philippe Starck

  Brain, Intellect

  32 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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• 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

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• As a publisher and author, I'm a big fan of historical fiction and also memoir.

  Andrea Davis Pinkney

  Historical, Fans, Fiction

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• These words "accessible" and "emotionally available" get thrown at us from agents and editors and publishers - or the reverse - if it's not all goo-ey and sentimental we're told it's "cold" or "uncaring" or "emotionally vacant." In other words, responses to women's writing in particular continue to be "gendered."

  Lidia Yuknavitch

  Writing, Editors, Agents

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

  Jess Walter

  Book, Thinking, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

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• 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

  19 Copy quote

• When I finish a book, I'll go to that file and look through them. And I'll say, these are three that really excite me and I want to do them next. You have the business part; of those three, is the publisher excited about one? Is the agent?

  Matt de la Pena

  Book, Three, Looks

  Source: therumpus.net

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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

  5 Copy quote

• 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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• 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 don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.

  Paul Auster

  Use, Memoir, Wanted

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy, Sophie Vallas, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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

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