Publishers Quotes - Page 6

Gutenberg made everybody a reader. Xerox makes everybody a publisher.

Marshall McLuhan

Gutenberg, Machines, Made

Quoted in Wash. Post, 15 May 1977

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No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

Oscar Wilde

Book, Men, Criticism

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For years, I've pushed the idea of a column compilation book mainly because it would be easy - I could just staple 'em all together. But publishers have been resistent, feeling the material dates.

Michael Musto

Book, Years, Ideas

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I write synopses after the book is completed. I can't write it beforehand, because I don't know what the book's about. I invent something for my publisher because he asks for one, but the final book ends up very differently.

Jackie Collins

Book, Writing, Finals

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I've worked with many large and small publishers, and nearly all of them love the value that Instapaper provides to their readers.

Marco Arment

Reader, Values

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I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got bought by a bigger firm. Story: in the end is the beginning, and in the beginning is the end.

Ali Smith

Jobs, Get Better, Stories

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My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

Ian Rankin

Dream, Giving Up, Book

"Ian Rankin, author - portrait of the artist". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. December 11, 2012.

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Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.

Raymond Chandler

Art, Class, Play

Raymond Chandler (1995). “Later Novels & Other Writings”

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Publishers have realized that, unlike the previous time period, American teenagers are both smarter and require more topical material than they had been giving them before that. For one thing, they'll read thicker books. Besides, has anybody looked at the news or read the newspapers recently?

Tamora Pierce

Teenager, Book, Giving

"Interview | YA authors Ally Condie and Tamora Pierce". Interview with Amy L. Hayden, www.timeout.com. November 7, 2011.

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That the Op-Ed page is very important in readers' and the nation's perception of the Times, the perception of its editorial positions, and of its implicit editorial positions as expressed by the publisher's choice of people who are given the freedom to write opinion columns.

Daniel Okrent

Writing, People, Choices

"It's curtains for Okrent". Interview with Steve Kettmann, www.theguardian.com. May 12, 2005.

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Coming into the business, you'd pass through these little agencies until you got to understand what was happening in the business, unless you were really able to have a style strong enough to go directly to the publishers.

Gil Kane

Strong, Agency, Style

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My publishers are wonderful because they have let me write what I wanted to. They're wise enough to know that, with any author who's not simply writing formulas - who's trying to create something new - pressuring them to do something for market purposes almost always backfires. I can't imagine working under those circumstances, actually.

Elizabeth Kostova

Wise, Writing, Trying

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I've published several virtually invisible novels and several dozen even more invisible short stories over the years, all of which give me joy - unlike the cumulative experience of seeking publishers for them!

Scott Bradfield

Years, Giving, Joy

"Go Forth (Vol. 15)". Interview with Brandon Hobson, logger.believermag.com. September 10, 2013.

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The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books.

Rachel Gibson

New York, Book, Writing

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As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

Jonathan Coe

Writing, Wife, Littles

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But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

David Baldacci

Writing, Expectations, Able

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Once in 1919, when I was traveling at night by train, I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story.

Mikhail Bulgakov

Night, Stories, Towns

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Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels.

John Thomas Sladek

Stories, Novel, Short Story

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No publisher should ever express an opinion of the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide.

Oscar Wilde

Matter, Opinion, Should

Letter in 'St James's Gazette' 28 June 1890

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The author of the extremely successful Twilight series was rejected by 14 different publishers before the 15th picked up Twilight. What would all the tweens do if Bella and Edward hadn't been brought to life?!

Stephenie Meyer

Twilight, Successful, Different

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As 99 per cent of English authors and 100 per cent of American ones [authors] are just such imbeciles, managers and publishers make a practice of asking for every right the author possesses.

George Bernard Shaw

Practice, Asking, Imbeciles

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I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It's a challenge to the powers that be. It's saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.

Alan Lightman

Country, Real, Challenges

Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

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I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it's as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium.

Matt Groening

Thinking, Going Out, Way

Interview with Nathan Rabin, tv.avclub.com. April 26, 2006.

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The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Eduardo Galeano

Wall, Writing, Poor

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I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

C. S. Forester

Writing, Thinking, Editors

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