Publishing Quotes

• Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

  Sylvia Plath

  Success, Writing, Stink

  Barry Kyle, Sylvia Plath (1976). “Sylvia Plath, a Dramatic Portrait: Conceived and Adapted from Her Writings, by Barry Kyle”

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• The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

  Robert Benchley

  Writing, Men, Pieces

  James Thurber, The Bermudian Magazine, November 1950.

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• If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.

  Alan Paton

  Issues, Novel, Concern

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• Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Numbers, Criminals, Dollars

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream”, p.291, Pan Macmillan

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• The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.

  Seth Godin

  Want, Connections, Reader

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• Publishing is a business, but journalism never was and is not essentially a business. Nor is it a profession.

  Henry R. Luce

  Journalism, Profession

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• Because publishing is becoming more business-oriented each day with more examination of the bottom line, it's harder to break out than ever.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Break Out, Each Day, Examination

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• There's a lust in man, no charm can tame, of loudly publishing our neighbor's shame.

  Juvenal

  Men, Eagles, Lust

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• No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.

  John Peter Zenger

  Writing, Political, Liberty

  38 Copy quote

• 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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• There are three difficulties in authorship; to write any thing worth the publishing — to find honest men to publish it — and to get sensible men to read it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Writing, Men, Three

  "Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think".

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• Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

  Don Marquis

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Don Marquis, William McCollum (1982). “Selected letters of Don Marquis”, Northwoods Pr

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• Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing, when all is said and done, comes down to dollars.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Art, Writing, Dollars

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• It is clear that a novel cannot be too bad to be worth publishing. . . . It certainly is possible for a novel to be too good to be worth publishing.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Novel, Clear

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• We are interested in stifling the sale of this book. We believe that this can be best accomplished by refusing to be stampeded into giving it publicity...The less discussion there is concerning it the more sales resistance will be created. We therefore appeal to you to refrain from comment on this book...It is our conviction that a general compliance with this request will sound the warning to other publishing houses against engaging in this type of venture. (Signed) Richard E. Gutstadt, Director.

  Madison Grant

  Book, Believe, Publishing House

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• The publishing industry, unsurprisingly, is full of different people who love different things and express that love in different languages. Find the people, the editors and agents, with whom you share some language, and some sense of what makes literature worth reading.

  Leslie Jamison

  Reading, Editors, People

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• In my long, long years toiling around the publishing industry, I've found that women simply don't stick to the writing with the same fervor that men do.

  Jim Goad

  Writing, Men, Years

  Source: love-and-pop.com

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• But once you publish a book, doesn’t it by definition become the realm of public discourse? Otherwise, wouldn’t we just write books and print them out ourselves, and give them to specific people we felt comfortable giving them to–like gifts? Isn’t publishing sort of a social contract?

  Jonathan Evison

  Book, Writing, People

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• I got a publishing deal with BMG, they were supportive, and some money to record demos

  Duncan Sheik

  Supportive, Records, Deals

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• As a total activity - I practice curating, art, architecture, writing, and publishing all together. I still act as a living creature.

  Ai Weiwei

  Art, Writing, Practice

  Interview with Claudine Ko, www.mcsweeneys.net. 2007.

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• If you have a song that you think sounds like another song you should contact the publishing company and say I have a song here, let's cut a deal that lets everyone walk away feeling good.

  Wayne Coyne

  Song, Cutting, Thinking

  "The Flaming Lips Interview From Noise11.com Archives". Interview with Paul Cashmere, www.noise11.com. April 23, 2016.

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• There's a reason that so much good material is coming down to the small presses: it's difficult to turn a profit, all things considered. But you can't go into small press publishing and complain about the money. Our Little Island publishing just needs to survive. If we're still around in a few years - in vaguely the same shape as we are today - then, to me, that's success.

  Andrew Latimer

  Complaining, Today, Reason

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?

  Clay Shirky

  Why Not, Internet, Mass

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• Publishing should be a collaboration between authors and their smartest readers - and at some point the distinction should become meaningless.

  Nick Denton

  Collaboration, Should, Distinction

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• The day has gone by when a monk can tear a Hypatia from the pursuit of philosophy and throw her to a rabble of insane monastics to be dragged to a violent death.... Man has made himself a law unto himself, publishing it in his pretended "heavenly" revelations, dogmas, and statutes. Woman is not constructing a law unto herself, and she is putting it forth, not on a pretendedly supernatural, but on a natural basis.

  Ellen Battelle Dietrick

  Philosophy, Men, Law

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