Publishers Quotes - Page 10

• "Eight Days of Luke" was refused by another confused publisher on the grounds that children shouldn't strike matches. When my agent pointed out that David in the book was twelve years old, the publisher said that he was striking matches to summon the devil, then, and this couldn't be allowed.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Children, Confused, Book

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• Publishers are private businesspeople who must reach their economic goals independently.

  Mathias Dopfner

  Goal, Economic

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• Writers generally get into writing because they want to write, not because they want to be independent publishers, and you can't really fault someone for saying, 'What I'm doing right now works, so there's no reason to change it.'

  Jennifer Armintrout

  Independent, Writing, Faults

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• Publishers seem to be in an alcoholic haze most of the time. Well, the publishers have no idea what a writer is.

  James Purdy

  Ideas, Haze, Wells

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I enjoy the hell out of writing but don't like what follows: promotion and publicity, which I always strive to keep to a minimum, sometimes to my publisher's dismay.

  Dean Koontz

  Writing, Publicity, Sometimes

  "Interview with the Master of Suspense, Dean Koontz (part 1)". Interview with Trisha Sugarek, www.writeratplay.com. June 28, 2014.

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• You can't sell a book in America if you don't dump on Bush. That's the cheapest shot in the world. You cannot get an advance, and you can't sell a book because the publishers are all people who hate Bush and hate Republicans.

  Roger Ailes

  Hate, Book, America

  "Fox Business v. CNBC; Ailes v. The Critics; My Programming Suggestions:'Failure Is Never Pemanent Unless You Accept It'". www.hughhewitt.com. October 8, 2007.

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• I was in a pharmacy and I saw the warnings on the backs of poisonous substances, and I thought, "Well, that's what I can do." So I wrote a list of ingredients in the book, and warnings that they shouldn't consume those ingredients. The editor and the publisher thought that it was a great way to go in terms of reverse psychology, but it honestly hadn't occurred to me that it was reverse psychology. I just thought that it was sort of an honest assessment making clear that if you were timid or easily disturbed, you could turn away.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Editors, Assessment

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2005.

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• My publisher had mailed [Bret Easton Ellis] Richard Yates. And when I talked to him he said he had read all my prose books. And he said something like, "You got a lot of mileage out of Dakota Fanning."

  Tao Lin

  Book, Like You, Said

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When the publisher here in America wanted to put the word "memoir" on the title page [of 'Winter Journal'] and on the cover, I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no." No genre whatsoever. It's an independent work not really connected to those things at all.

  Paul Auster

  Independent, Winter, America

  Interview with Wayne Gooderham, www.timeout.com.

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• I don't read reviews any more, but I'm told by my publisher who gives me an account of what people have been writing and it's been a very split kind of response.

  Paul Auster

  Writing, People, Giving

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• Launching Collins in the U.S. fulfills the original vision of the 1989 union of Harper & Row and William Collins. Publishing has clarified the many benefits of working as a global company. I believe that a true 21st century publisher is a global publisher. Harper Collins is well on its way.

  David D. Friedman

  Believe, Vision, Benefits

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• I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.

  Richard Curtis

  Book, Selling, Turns

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• You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher.

  Richard Curtis

  Running, Agency, Remember

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• Except for a few small presses, most publishers are north of Ground Zero.

  Richard Curtis

  Zero, Ground Zero, Presses

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• Back in the pre-internet age there were pirate publishers, especially in the third world, who would print physical copies of books, sell them, and never inform the author/their agent/their publisher just trousering the money. I think we can agree that this was piracy?

  Charles Stross

  Book, Thinking, Pirate

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. July 02, 2012.

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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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• Publishers give you deadlines for those last phases of production that are perfectly comfortable for them. So, to whatever extent I can, I like to push those to give me a little more time, and make it so that they're as uncomfortable as I am.

  Charles Frazier

  Giving, Phases, Littles

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• Writers are essential. Readers are essential. Publishers are not.

  J.A. Konrath

  Essentials, Reader

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• Agents are essential, because publishers will not read unsolicited manuscripts.

  Jackie Collins

  Aquariums, Essentials, Agents

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• Publishers see free downloads as threatening the sales of the book.

  Paulo Coelho

  Book, Threatening, Downloads

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• Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent.

  Maxim Gorky

  Air, Castles, Inns

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• Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.

  Bergen Evans

  Leadership, College, Average

  Bergen Evans (1954). “The Spoor of Spooks: And Other Nonsense”, New York : Knopf

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• I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country's peril. In time of war, the government and the press have customarily joined in an effort based largely on self-discipline, to prevent unauthorized disclosures to the enemy. In time of "clear and present danger," the courts have held that even the privileged rights of the First Amendment must yield to the public's need for national security.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, War, Mistake

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.

  Lee Child

  Jobs, Reading, Writing

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• Three publishers came to me at the White House after George lost and said, 'We would like to publish your book.' I said, 'Well, I don't have a book,' and they said well it's a well known fact that you have kept diaries.

  Barbara Bush

  Book, White, House

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