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• Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.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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• Publishing requires a lot of persistence and a fair amount of luck.

  Liza Campbell

  Persistence, Luck, Fairs

  Source: newwest.net

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• One of the things I like about publishing is that you don't promote the editor - you promote the book and the author.

  Jackie Kennedy

  Book, Editors

  "Publishers Weekly" Magazine, April 19, 1993.

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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 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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• 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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• 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 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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• We need prizes as publishers... to focus attention on books, for people to know what to go look for. But often in my opinion and in probably everyone's opinion, the right books don't get chosen. Still we need books to be chosen even if they are not exactly the right ones, otherwise many people won't know what to read. As a publisher, I feel prizes are important for the publishing business. But as a writer, I think, writers shouldn't get too distracted by prizes because very often they don't go to the right person. You shouldn't take it too seriously if you haven't won a prize.

  Jonathan W. Galassi

  Book, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If writing and publishing a book is like giving birth to a child, then book marketing is like rearing it.

  Heather Hart

  Children, Book, Writing

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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

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.

  Ann Patchett

  Art, Crazy, Reading

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The Internet obviously changes things; we've seen that in the music industry above all else. As an author, I'm now having to deal with the fact that it's happening in the publishing industry as well. And publishing is going through a very difficult time. Some view it as positive, some negative, but nobody really knows how to deal with it. If you're an author it looks very challenging because your work can be pirated so easily and there's very little you can do about it.

  Misha Glenny

  Challenges, Negative, Difficult Times

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.

  Barry Eisler

  Ideology

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• ...if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead!

  Massimo Vignelli

  Doctors, People, Design

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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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• 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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• 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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