Publishers Quotes - Page 3

• We're living at a time when attention is the new currency We're all publishers now, and the more we publish, the more valuable connections we'll make. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity.

  Pete Cashmore

  Lonely, Simple, Giving

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• Your book may be a masterpiece but do not suggest that to the publisher because many of the most hopeless manuscripts that have come his way have probably been so described by their authors.

  Stanley Unwin

  Book, May, Way

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• I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves they got up this entire little flutter to enable them to unload a book that was taking too much room in their cellars, but you can never tell what a publisher will do. I have been one myself.

  Mark Twain

  Sorry, Book, Thinking

  Mark Twain (2014). “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, p.11, Penguin

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• My theory is that, just like with omitting a final comma in a list when not essential for meaning, publishers are trying to save paper and ink or pixels on-screen.

  Bill Walsh

  Trying, Pixels, Lists

  Source: live.washingtonpost.com

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• In Heaven all reviews will be favorable; here on earth, the publisher realizes, plausibility demands an occasional bad one, some convincing lump in all that leaven, and he accepts it somewhat as a theologian accepts Evil.

  Randall Jarrell

  Evil, Heaven, Demand

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Contemporary Poetry Criticism" (p. 59), 1980.

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• I labored for eight years thinking that I was writing a book for adults that was a nostalgic look back on childhood. Then my publisher informed me I'd written a children's book.

  Jeff Kinney

  Children, Book, Writing

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• The share of the sympathetic publisher in the author's success - the true success so different from the ephemeral - is apt to be overlooked in these blatant days, so it is just as well that some of us should keep it in mind.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Mind, Different, Ephemeral

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• A lot of publishers have close relationships with people in power. So the press, which used to speak truth to power, doesn't. The big result of that has been the erosion of trust.

  Craig Newmark

  Erosion, People, Speak

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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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• With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

  Anthony Burgess

  Cottages, Agents, Literature

  Anthony Burgess (1990). “You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess”, Heinemann Educational Books

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• Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing.

  Louise Brown

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• I had brought up from Chile a contract agent whose cover was that of a newspaper publisher in Santiago, a young, very talented man, named Dave Phillips, who later on carved quite a career for himself in the agency.

  E. Howard Hunt

  Men, Agency, Careers

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• I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Editors, Stuff

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• My agent and I put out my proposal one Thursday afternoon in August, 1998. Publishers started bidding immediately, and that process progressed for a few days.

  Laura Hillenbrand

  August, Bidding, Afternoon

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• It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Country, Support, Paper

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• The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children's books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I'd much rather just do something completely different even if there's a risk of it going wrong.

  Mark Haddon

  Children, Book, Risk

  "Finding the vital spark". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2005.

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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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• Writers are always a great nuisance to publishers. If they could do without them, they would.

  Fay Weldon

  Nuisance, Ifs

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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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• To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution.

  Tim Ferriss

  Support, Marketing, Retail

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• There are two kinds of books in this world. One improves the mind, the other the bank balance. Sometimes they're the same -- but not often. Most publishers find combining the two is the only way to stay afloat.

  Paula Gosling

  Book, Two, Mind

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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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• In some cases, people are silent; they're being complacent. But we're also seeing people speak out against some of these raids, these arrests. So for example, the Townhouse Gallery - the outreach director gave an interview to Ahram Online, which is a semi-official news agency here. And he sort of dismissed it, played it down. But the publisher from the publishing house - the Merit Publishing House, which was raided - he said this won't scare us; we will continue to dream of a free country, a country with social justice, and this won't silence us.

  Leila Fadel

  Dream, Country, Agency

  "Egypt Expands Crackdown On Freedom Of Expression, Advocates Say". "Morning Edition" with Renee Montagne, www.npr.org. December 30, 2015.

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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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• To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?

  Aleister Crowley

  Book, Autumn, Men

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