Publish Book Quotes & Sayings

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books. — Margaret Mahy

I do 280 episodes of TV a year, write 15 recipes for the magazine, and publish an annual book. With all of that, we try to get one weekend a month with Isaboo at our home in the Adirondacks to relax and recharge. — Rachael Ray

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it. — George Bernard Shaw

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

This book was company for me - I wrote these things when I was in hotels, far from where I normally live. I never intended to publish it. — Catherine Deneuve

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that? — Margaret Atwood

People generally don't recognize how long it takes to conceive, publish, and write a book. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If you think success is about so many more things and is so much more arbitrary, then you can be much more open to the idea that you can be Ben Fountain and publish your great book at forty-nine. — Malcolm Gladwell

It always felt good typing up a review on a book I enjoyed and I went all out, finding bizarre pictures to emphasis the wow factor. I preffered ones with cute kittens and llamas. And Dean Winchester. Hitting 'publish post' cracked a smile. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I started writing with intent to publish on January 1st, 1985, when, as my New Year's resolution, I resolved to finish a book before I turned 25. It's one of only a few New Year's resolutions I remember keeping - I finished that one with a couple weeks to spare. — Holly Lisle

When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way. — Maxine Hong Kingston

For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not). — Nancy Kress

When I'm scared - and I'm always scared when I have to face an audience, when I have to read a review, when I publish a book ... then, I think of my grandfather. My grandfather was this strong, tough Basque who would never bend ... What would he do? Well, he would go ahead, close his eyes, and drive forward. You do it and the spirit that is within you ... is there. — Isabel Allende

I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world." — Jonathan Swift

Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish. — Linda Sue Park

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. — Philip Roth

Many years, I would publish four books - an anthology, a book of criticism, a new book of poems, a book of essays. — Donald Hall

For seven years I wrote and published my texts on the Internet and no Arab festival invited me and no Arab publishing house wanted to publish my books, and I wasn't known in the Western world because of my political positions. — Hassan Blasim

Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house. — Amanda Hocking

IT TAKES SOME temerity to publish, in a new edition, a book written more than thirty years ago. — Richard A. Lanham

But it's clear to me that us slow-poke writers are a dying breed. It's amazing how thoroughly my young writing students have internalized the new machine rhythm, the rush many of my young writers are in to publish. The majority don't want to sit on a book for four, five years. The majority don't want to listen to the silence inside and outside for their artistic imprimatur. The majority want to publish fast, publish now. — Junot Diaz

Publish a book before you're too old to read it without glasses. — Fennel Hudson

It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you have written a great book, you will never publish anything. Great books happen by chance, not by design. The wise writer writes the best he can and leaves it to posterity to decide about greatness. — Andrew M. Greeley

Now, I'll tell you something that might interest you. Casino Royale was the first Bond book that Ian Fleming ever wrote. And he couldn't get anybody to touch it, to publish it - he couldn't do anything about it at all. Nobody wanted to know. — Val Guest

I think the next thing I publish will be for children, but I don't really want to be held to that because I also know what my next book for adults will be, and I really like that, too, so it depends. I've always had more than one thing going. — J.K. Rowling

If someone's going to publish a book about addiction, it has to say something new and different. It has to be something we haven't read before. A lot of these books are published because the writing is wonderful. The Frey book has superb writing, and that can be enough to sell a book. — Charles Adams

Don't judge a book by its cover. Judge it by its publisher. — Ljupka Cvetanova

When you see me in a scarf you may think "Oh, she went to some trouble there." But no, when I wear a scarf it means" this grey blouse was unwrinkled and those mocha pants make my behind look fine and voila I have a vivid grey,brown and white silk scarf which means I have transformed self from bone lazy to coordinated accessory maven.
Bridget Allison (Gretchen Gallen in my book#3, "Maid in Waiting" publish date June 2014) — Bridget Allison

I learned how difficult it is to self-publish a book. It's complex, it's confusing, it's idiosyncratic. — Guy Kawasaki

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself. — Dave Grohl

When I was getting ready for the release of 'Deadline,' when it was coming out soon, I decided that the appropriate way to get people excited about the book would be to write a novella in 30 pieces and publish a piece on my blog every day for a month ... during a convention, a week-and-a-half-long trip to New York, and a doll traders' expo. — Seanan McGuire

I've always tried to keep my cover prices on the low side. I'm more interested in getting people to read the books we publish and less interested in the profit margin. — Kevin Sampsell

Basically, I've reached the point where I've lost any direct relationship to any of the editors I used to have. I suspect I'll have to pay to publish this myself, and I think a lot about about putting out fifty copies. I used to think about hogwash like my legacy and silly things like that. But I feel like if I never have another book out, I've done okay, I've had like twelve or thirteen little books, and I won't be upset about this on my death bed. — Richard Meltzer

It takes a long time to publish a book. — Kenneth Koch

I fall asleep everywhere! Someone recently asked if they could publish a book of pictures of me sleeping because there are so many. — Cara Delevingne

I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at the end of the year you have 365. So the pages accumulate and then I publish the books. — Philip Roth

Every time you publish a book, be prepared to eat a fresh slice of humble pie. — Shana James

The problem is that in order to publish a book in mainland China, you have to agree to be subject to censorship. That's the nature of the system. I don't challenge that system on its face. It's their system. But as an author, I have a choice to make whether I'll participate or I won't. — Evan Osnos

When you publish a book, you do so in part to end the silence. All censorship is silence. I would never, as an author, feel right requiring a young person whose family would object to the book to read it. Just as I would never force that person to read it, I would ask those folks to not force others not to read it. To me, that is just good manners. — Stephen Chbosky

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I have been writing now for 3 years, managed to publish 12 books, it's coming along. I can really use you guys support. A great amount of being a writer is having the ability to persist and along the way each book sale with its additional review comments is a win and a reminder that I can make it. Pick up one of my books today and if you like it, tell a friend and maybe will do the same thing. It would be much appreciated. You'll find them on Amazon and Kobo.

Claire — Claire Hamelin Manning

I think you and I ought to publish our letters (they'd be a jolly good book by the way) under the title of lamentations, as we are always jawing about our sorrows. — C.S. Lewis

You can publish a poem you think is a very important poem, and you don't hear a word from anyone. You can publish a book of poetry by dropping it off a cliff and waiting to hear an echo. Quite often, you'll never hear a thing. So doing that, using older work, puts it in a context, and that sort of forces the reader to realize what its importance is-if it has any. Everything needs a context. You're not going to recognize a poet unless you have a context. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

When you decide to write and publish a book, you go into business - no matter how you publish that book. You enter the publishing business, which is the business of selling books. Consider your book the foundation of your business. — Nina Amir

Free people write books," it said. "Free people publish books. Free people sell books. Free people buy books. Free people read books. In the spirit of America's commitment to free expression we inform the public that this book will be available to readers at bookshops and libraries throughout the country. — Salman Rushdie

Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing. — Evgeny Morozov

I do believe that the collapse of the traditional media is catastrophic for our democracy, but I wasn't about to mythologize it. I understand its structural flaws, and the lies it tells, which are primarily, but not always, the lies of omission, and I wasn't going to leave that out. Knopf offered to publish the book but they said that an editor was going to "take out all the negativity," which, of course, I wasn't going to accept. I had been paid half my advance, and I had Nation Books buy the manuscript for that half. — Chris Hedges

One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit. — Rene Burri

A lot of people who read my novel 'Smog City' ask me why I never killed off either of the two main characters. To be honest, it's because I've given them life. Not literally of course, but since I spent so much time developing and creating my characters, they've ended up with complex personalities, in fact they're almost sentient in a way, and to write them off as dead would be like killing a close friend to me. — Rebecca McNutt

I don't know why the publishers in New York don't take a tip from Hollywood and just publish the outlines of novels rather than the completed books. Let the audience use their imaginations, as my Maw always says about radio. I would much prefer to read an outline of War and Peace than slog through eight hundred thousand words. Why do I need Tolstoy to describe snow? I can imagine snow, whether Russian snow or just regular snow. But book publishers seem to think that the authors should do all the work, and the readers should be waited on hand-and-foot like a buncha goddamn prima donnas. — Gary Reilly

I was a litigation lawyer. That's all very logical. Become a litigation lawyer. Become successful. Have a nice office. But there was some pull inside of me saying, self-publish this book. I followed that intuition and it's been a great choice for me in my life. — Robin S. Sharma

Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin, I suggested to Oscar Wilde that he should go a step further than these minor poets; he should publish a book all margin; full of beautiful, unwritten thoughts. — Ada Leverson

We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something ... because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed. — Chris Anderson

I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house. — Dave Eggers

I like to skip prewriting. I love just jumping into the actual writing process. Then I revise/edit and fix what I need to. Then the following steps; proofread and publish. Of course before you just go into writing, it would be a good idea to do some charts of each chapter ... what you would want each one to be about and have a character list with their personalities and how they will come into play in your book. I mean, you wouldn't just want to go all crazy and jot down all kinds of random stuff at once ... trust me, you'll go crazy. With writing, you take it as it comes, go with your own flow.-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

If the very thought of taking off all your clothes in the middle of the Washington Mall during a school holiday makes you blush, you haven't even begun to dream what it feels like to publish a book. — Nancy Mairs

Whenever people ask me, "How are your books doing?" or, "How is your book doing?" I just say, "It's okay." I mean, what am I supposed to say? I'm a writer; that means I write because I need to write, because that's how I breathe and that's how I bleed. I'm not an author; I'm a writer. Even when I don't want to write; I can't stop! So, how are my books doing? The hell I know! The moment after I publish one book, I'm writing another one! I don't know how my books are doing! I just know that I'm writing them! I'm a writer, I'm a writer. I'm not an author. — C. JoyBell C.

Nobody wanted to publish a book about fairies; they said people wouldn't be interested. Luckily, I discovered Lady Cottington and her pressed fairies, which revived a huge amount of interest in fairies, so I could go ahead and do the book I wanted to do. — Brian Froud

If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself. — Annie Dillard

I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book. — Karen Thompson Walker

I always revise when I publish in a book. So versions in magazines are sometimes slightly different. — Rigoberto Gonzalez

There are many reasons for keeping a diary: to make a note of facts that one considers important; to open one's heart, to give vent to one's feelings, to make confessions; from the instinct of economy which sometimes encourages a writer to make good use of even the smallest crumbs of his life, so that he may have one more book to publish; or again from vanity and self- satisfaction. — Alberto Moravia

I am stunned by how much time and effort I must spend marketing my book and interacting with my readers. With social media, you don't just publish a book and figure you've done your part; your fans want to talk to you, have a conversation. — Bruce Cameron

Pan me, don't give me the part, publish everybody's book but this one and I will still make it! — Ruth Gordon

It's interesting to me that really one of the first things she [Eleanor Roosevelt]did as First Lady was to collect her father's letters and publish a book called The Letters of My Father, essentially, hunting big game, The Letters of Elliott Roosevelt. And it really was an act of redemption, really one of her first acts of redemption as she entered the White House. She was going to redeem her father's honor. And publishing his letters, reconnecting with her childhood really fortified her to go on into the difficult White House years. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Maybe self-publishing is going to be an extra step added to publishing. Maybe what's going to happen is you self-publish a book, someone notices it - an agent? - and it goes from there into the traditional sphere. — Victoria Strauss

The referee said it was not acceptable, but the Press considered they could not refuse to publish a book by a professor of the university. — John Edensor Littlewood

I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish. — Nora Roberts

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. — Van Wyck Brooks

The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books. — Rachel Gibson

Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time, hearing only her characters in her head. — Allegra Goodman

Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place. — Charles Stross

I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good. — Richard Curtis

Every scholarly history that was written before 1920 was written by a man who had been taught by a man, whose thesis would be examined by a man, and whose book would be published by a male publisher and reviewed by a male critic. This could not change until women were admitted to universities and colleges. When women could train as historians in the universities, they could for the first time research, write, and publish scholarly history. — Philippa Gregory

I have poetic failures all the time. Many failed poems. I try not to publish those, though some have slipped into each book, since I can't always tell they're failures until later ... or I don't want to admit that they are. — Matthea Harvey

Most of the photographs I make are personal pictures and never end up in print. Even the magazines I shoot for on assignment publish very few of the actual selects. Sometimes these personal pictures will end up in a book of my work. Oftentimes, however, they are simply photographs which I hope resonate, yet rarely find a publication home. I do a lot of personal work in Rio de Janeiro, and this of a parkour artist making a jump on Ipanema Beach is such a moment. — David Alan Harvey

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn't easy, but it's fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world. — Guy Kawasaki

For books [Charles Darwin] had no respect, but merely considered them as tools to be worked with ... he would cut a heavy book in half, to make it more convenient to hold. He used to boast that he had made Lyell publish the second edition of one of his books in two volumes, instead of in one, by telling him how ho had been obliged to cut it in half ... his library was not ornamental, but was striking from being so evidently a working collection of books. — Francis Darwin

Even though I'm an ordinary writer, I too, have trouble when it come to writing along the way. But at least I manage to self-publish my book with no errors (hopefully). Just check out Agatha Christie, an author who also has a learning disability. She managed to be succesful. And I hope that I would be successful as her and Abishek Bachan. — Simi Sunny

Writers can write whatever they want, but after THE END, when they self publish their book, they become accountable to readers for the quality of the book they're selling. — Eeva Lancaster

Write from the heart. A book without a pulse is like a person without a spirit. Linda Radke, President of Five Star Publications — Linda F. Radke

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
— Philip Roth

If the book's bad enough, they'll publish it, and if it's bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it'll sell. — James Purdy

I do read everything that we publish. We usually have to have two or three votes for a book before we take it on. So in that sense I suppose it is an orchestra. — James Laughlin

Some readers sort of suspect that you have another book that you didn't publish that has even more information in it. I think that readers sort of want to be taught something. They have this idea that there's a takeaway from a novel rather than just the being there, which I think is the great, great pleasure of reading. — Alice McDermott

Maybe I should publish the book. The world is coming to an end anyway! — Bobby Fischer

I have swung on a flying trapeze, explored a glacier, and been hit in the face by a shark's tail while scuba diving. I like to throw myself fully into projects and adventures, which is probably how I managed to publish a book in the first place. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Somebody said recently that the best thing a student could do was to get in some shows and publish a book; but nothing about becoming a human being, nothing about having important feelings or concepts of humanity. That's the sort of thing that is bad education. I'd say be a human being first and if you happen to wind up using photography, that's good for photography. — Henry Holmes Smith

Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it. — Margaret Atwood

If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it
I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did. — Tanith Lee

I'm not interested in writing for adults. I like them as people! I don't like the way they publish books in that world. Nothing ever gets a chance. — John Green

I've had situations when I've actually encouraged authors to self-publish because their book was poor. Now one would conclude that I'm asking them to self-publish because their book was poor and the self-publishing warehouse is where all the poor books belong. But no, it's because "poor" is only my opinion, and I'm just one in millions of readers. — King Samuel Benson

We have more freedom of the press than any other country in a similar position. Even way back in the frightened '50s, Communists, for example, could publish their magazine. The KKK published their own books. But face it, the mass media is controlled by money. — Pete Seeger

The trick isn't to simply publish a book; the trick is to produce a quality book package to surround the book's content — Hank Quense

What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee's. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it. — Dan Alatorre

The world has become man's right and everything in it has become a right: the desire for love the right to love, the desire for rest the right to rest, the desire for friendship the right to friendship, the desire to exceed the speed limit the right to exceed the speed limit, the desire for happiness the right to happiness, the desire to publish a book the right to publish a book, the desire to shout in the street in the middle of the night the right to shout in the street. — Milan Kundera

The post-war "publish or perish" tyranny must end. The profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. [ ... ] One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book. — Camille Paglia

One's head is finite. You pour more and more things into it - surnames, chronologies, affiliations - and it packs them away in its tunnels, and eventually you find that you have a book about something that you publish. — Nicholson Baker

I chose to publish the first 'Shopaholic' book under a pseudonym because I wanted it to be judged on its own merits. — Sophie Kinsella

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent. — Tom Perrotta

My foray into young adult lit was by no means planned. I wrote the first 'Alfred Kropp' book as an adult novel, which everyone loved but no one would publish - until I changed my protagonist from a thirty-something P.I. into a 15-year-old kid. After that, it was off to the races, and I am so glad. — Rick Yancey