Publishers Quotes - Page 4

• The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.

  Denis Norden

  Song, Comedian, Use

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• I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

  Gail Godwin

  Thinking, Shadow, Might

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• Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Elephants, Males

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

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• Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.

  William O. Douglas

  Book, Home, Government

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• The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.

  Agnes Repplier

  Book, Giving, Principles

  Agnes Repplier (1908). “A Happy Half-century: And Other Essays”

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• I was interested in creating things that I could be proud of and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, things that I could be proud of, and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, but in order to be an editor of a magazine I had to become a publisher as well. I had to pay the bills. I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution of that magazine.

  Richard Branson

  Creating Things, Order, Editors

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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

  44 Copy quote

• Literary success of any enduring kind is made by refusing to do what publishers want, by refusing to write what the public wants, by refusing to accept any popular standard, by refusing to write anything to order.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Writing, Order, Want

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• A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.

  Arthur Koestler

  Writing, Bars, Cows

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• Never buy an editor or publisher a lunch or a drink until he has bought an article, story or book from you. This rule is absolute and may be broken only at your peril.

  John Creasey

  Book, Editors, Lunch

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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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• I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called "My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business." A publisher came to me and said write a book so I did. I wanted to call it "Everybody Else Has Got a Book."

  Dick Van Dyke

  Book, Writing, Luck

  "Dick Van Dyke - At 87, Life is Better Than Ever!". Interview with Pat Gallagher, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 11, 2013.

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• The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading.

  Raymond Chandler

  Couple, Book, Reading

  Raymond Chandler, Tom Hiney, Frank MacShane (2002). “The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959”, p.69, Grove Press

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• 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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• 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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• We'd love to do Space Ace 3D. It has a lot of potential. But, it is really up to the publishers.

  Don Bluth

  Artist, Space, Aces

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• Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

  Emma Goldman

  Art, People, Creative

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.39, 谷月社

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• The idea that comics stores, distributors and publishers simply 'give the customers what they want' is nonsense. What the customers wanted they didn't get - and they left.

  Scott McCloud

  Book, Ideas, Giving

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• I don't believe in publishers who wish to butter their bannocks on both sides while they'll hardly allow an author to smell treacle. I consider they are too grabby altogether and like Methodists they love to keep the Sabbath and everything else they can lay hands upon.

  Amanda McKittrick Ros

  Believe, Smell, Hands

  Amanda McKittrick Ros, Frank Ormsby (1988). “Thine in storm and calm: an Amanda McKittrick Ros reader”, Blackstaff Pr

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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

  4 Copy quote

• All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.

  Mark Twain

  Successful, Reflection, America

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.73, Univ of California Press

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• 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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• Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are.

  Robert Caro

  Book, Thinking, Ties

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• Publishers never tell writers anything. They're all crazy and they drive me crazy.

  Anne Bernays

  Crazy, Drive Me Crazy

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