Quotes & Sayings About Publishers

The primary reason more explicit material is now being published is twofold: there's money in the sale of sensational material, and few are trying to stop those who want to make this money, that is, unscrupulous publishers. — Linda Harvey

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

Just why I sent it to the publishers would be hard to say, but when I had finished it I felt that it was literature, because it is real and because it was well written. And I know that the world wants such things. — Mary MacLane

We are going through a sexual tempest, a bombardment provided by unprecedented exploitation of cheap sex by moviemakers, theater owners, publishers, and producers of pornography. [There is more] openness of talk about sex, acceptance of public nudity ... homosexuality. Sex revolution, no! But sex pollution? Yes!! — Billy Graham

Beautiful publishers say beautiful things and then We're sorry, but no... and then more beautiful things. It's a shit sandwich with branston pickle and melted gouda.

I read it out loud to the kids. I stick it to the fridge with the others. Some writers do that because it turns their crank to have a Wall of Publishers Who Passed And Will Someday Regret It. I don't. Each one is, really and truly, a gift. We look at them and the boys and I talk about rejection, all kinds of it. Creative, karmic, romantic. Nothing works out until something does. — Kate Inglis

When the inner child finds a guardian angel, publishers are in heaven. — Wendy Kaminer

Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, and speaks in no uncertain terms about God's plan for your life and how to live it. Adding value to the Bible almost always means adding "biblical" values that are either missing or really hard to find in the Bible itself but that provide that feeling of Bibleness so many seek. — Timothy Beal

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. — John Lennon

Keep a close watch on yourself and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right. 1 TIMOTHY 4:16 NLT — Bethany House Publishers

Game studios, developers, and major publishers need to vocally speak up against the harassment of women and say this behavior is unacceptable. — Anita Sarkeesian

Leopold, one of the reporters who broke the Enron story, is now breaking his own story: how he got addicted to cocaine, committed grand theft, cleaned himself up and found happiness as a 'news junkie.' This scrappy memoir ... might become required reading for aspiring journalists. — Publishers Weekly

I journaled: "Why do I feel like crap after being offered a book deal by one of the best publishers on the planet?" The answer that I came up with surprised me. I knew there were people who would have done anything to get their work out into the world this way. i knew there were people who had worked their butts off and still hadn't made it. I knew there were people who had amazing, life-changing things to say who didn't have the platforms to say it yet. I knew there were people who would have been doing cartwheels in the street if they were me right now. And I felt like because they wanted it more, they should have it instead of me. — Kate Northrup

Compulsive? I lived and breathed refunding, and my children
benefited with their wide variety of toys, balls, and T-shirts
I obtained through my hobby. It was all a big game, and one that
I played well. And I was not alone. While there was no estimate
available on the number of people who were involved in refunding,
Carol Backs, publisher of Money Maker magazine in the
late 1980s and chairman of a trade association of refund magazine
publishers, claimed that refund magazines were selling eight
hundred thousand to one million subscriptions. — Mary Potter Kenyon

Since in the age of the internet we are all publishers, each of us bears some private responsibility for the public's sense of truth. If we are serious about seeking the facts, we can each make a small revolution in the way the internet works. If you are verifying information for yourself, you will not send on fake news to others. If you choose to follow reporters whom you have reason to trust, you can also transmit what they have learned to others. If you retweet only the work of humans who have followed journalistic protocols, you are less likely to debase your brain interacting with bots and trolls. We — Timothy Snyder

The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors - there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own. — Adam Mansbach

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

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

Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers. — Alma Gluck

We are publishers of content and consumers of content at the same time. (D. Abbot, J.Hegarty) — Gordon Torr

Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something. — Jay McInerney

I don't relax. My main relaxation is meeting illustrators and publishers in restaurants and bars. — Tony Ross

I believe I'm a better writer now than I was when I started. I'm grateful that I had good guidance because you don't make it in this business without good editors and a lot of support from your publishers. — Sharon Draper

From that moment on, the newspaper became a highly lucrative investment for those with a talent for making money or for publishers wanting to gain a fortune. — Ferdinand Lassalle

Most importantly, love each other deeply, because love cause many sins to be forgiven. - 1 Peter 4:8 — Thomas Nelson Publishers

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work. — Tanith Lee

I have finally become my own genre, and now that's what publishers want. I have a wonderful publisher now, Mulholland, very innovated, very fine people working there. — Joe R. Lansdale

Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing. — Jasper Fforde

When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript. — Kiran Desai

All things considered, I've learned more from talking to painters than talking to writers. Not that painters are smarter than writers, such is seldom the case, but in conversation writers are inclined to waste an inordinate amount of time either bragging or bellyaching about reviews and royalties, complaining about their publishers, or dissing other authors. Painters, being equally insecure, can likewise come across as boring and bitchy
it's tough being creative in a materialistic society
but since they labor not in vineyards of verbiage but upon ice floes of visual images, they tend to function with fewer inhibitions than the wordsmiths when it comes to vocally exploring and expressing ideas. Since no one judges their speech, comparing it to their written work, they don't feel so acutely the weight of language. — Tom Robbins

My fears are the obvious ones: that marketplace-minded publishers - all four of them - will shy further away from literary fiction, international authors, poetry, and the other marginal but hugely important regions of the book world. — David Edelstein

Dear God, I praise you for turning my seeds of hope into a fantastic harvest of blessings. Help me tell others of your excellent gifts. Amen. — Bethany House Publishers

I failed, many times in my life. One failure that I always remember was when my second book was rejected by 36 publishers. Many years later, I watched HuffPost come alive — Arianna Huffington

I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I don't think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok? — John Burdett

101 Reason why its its great to be a woman : Since the advent of feminism, we can publicly ogle male bodies and not be called sexist. If a man indulges in this behavior over a picture of naked woman, he is a sexist pig, and recompense must be demanded for this slight on womankind. — Summersdale Publishers

Brand marketers don't believe that ad-tech companies view brands as true partners. Ad-tech companies think brand marketers are paying attention to the wrong things. And publishers, with a few important exceptions, feel taken advantage of by everyone. — John Battelle

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you. — Caroline Leavitt

Thanks to the comic book publishers. Batman and Captain Marvel were responsible for my learning to read at least a year before I showed up at school. They got me interested in writing. Started my first novel at about eight. The title: 'The Canals of Mars.' — Jack McDevitt

This sort of encouragement is vital for any writer. And lastly the publication of Touching the Flame, which was on hold for two years and went through a few publishers before finding a stable home. — Paul Kane

Publishing is no longer simply a matter of picking worthy manuscripts and putting them on offer. It is now as important to market books properly, to work with the bookstore chains to getterms, co-op advertising, and the like. The difficulty is that publishers who can market are most often not the publishers with worthy lists. — Olivia Goldsmith

What I like least is dealing with publishers who simply don't want collaborations regardless of their merit. — Piers Anthony

I'm really interested in independent publishers and memes and mini comics. But even before that, I was interested in Japanese manga and anime. — Toyin Odutola

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead. — Dorothy Parker

Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day. — Philip Kerr

Most times with vanity projects, publishers don't believe in the work; they just believe in the name. — Gerard Way

Publishers vet books, and they do a good job keeping out the low quality. But they also miss some good quality. — J.A. Konrath

Coming into the business, you'd pass through these little agencies until you got to understand what was happening in the business, unless you were really able to have a style strong enough to go directly to the publishers. — Gil Kane

We were to found a University magazine. A pair of little, active brothers-Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against the University building-had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjuct editors and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic-that flatterer of credulity-the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Writers, and the battery of critics, scholars, and publishers supporting them, would ignore or deny the commercial and symbolic interests which drive them, so involved are they in the literary game, and so accepting are they of its unspoken rules and premises (what Bourdieu calls the field's illusio). — John R.W. Speller

There were eleven publishers in New York City, and when it was all over, I think it went down to four or five, and then finally just the three of them, the Big Three. — Dan DeCarlo

Publishers see free downloads as threatening the sales of the book. — Paulo Coelho

The Seven Deadly Sins of the Press: - Concentrated Power of the Big Press. - Passing of competition and the coming of monopoly. - Governmental control of the press. - Timidity, especially in the face of group and corporate pressures. - Big Business mentality. - Clannishness among the newspaper publishers that has prevented them from criticizing each other. - Social blindness. — Max Lerner

I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits ... Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters? If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell, it is this society of Loyola's. Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum. — John Adams

I'm not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help. — A. N. Wilson

I've worked with many large and small publishers, and nearly all of them love the value that Instapaper provides to their readers. — Marco Arment

[Lord Horror] was so unique and radical, I expected to go to prison for it. I always thought that if you wrote a truly dangerous book -- something dangerous would happen to you. Which is one reason there are so few really dangerous books around. Publishers play at promoting dangerous books, whether they're Serpent's Tail or Penguin. All you get is a book vetted by committee, never anything radically imaginative or offensive that will take your fucking head off. Ironically, I think it would do other authors a power of good if they had to account for their books by going to prison -- there are far too many bad books being published! — David Britton

As part of my research for An Anthology of Authors' Atrocity Stories About Publishers, I conducted a study (employing my usual controls) that showed the average shelf life of a trade book to be somewhere between milk and yoghurt. — Calvin Trillin

I don't use the term 'miracle' lightly. I don't believe in God, or reincarnation, or destiny, or the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. — Rick Reynolds

After Jesus showed up, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.
Of course, just because Jesus replaces the Old Testament doesn't mean that you should necessarily skip it. That would be like skipping Batman and Robin just because the story starts over in Batman Begins. The important thing to realize is that both the old and new stories are about an all-powerful being trying to rid the world of evildoers, only in the new one The Batman can eat pork. — Stephen Colbert

Hitchcock's debut novel introduces 14-year-old Jessie Pearl, who endures more than her fair share of hardships, beginning with the death of her mother. Opening in 1922, the story follows the daily activities on the family's North Carolina tobacco farm. ...Hitchcock's story is gently and lovingly written, with elements drawn from her own family history. Its detailed honesty about the particular struggles of the period, especially for strong women (Maude, a no-nonsense midwife, is particularly memorable), is significant.
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY — Publishers Weekly

Publishers are thieves, they are on the other side of the barricade. — Paul Bowles

I never go home and take out those business cards and go to those websites. But if there was a mini-comic here in my hand, I'd read it while I ate my lunch. I'm also probably one of the few remaining holdouts who hasn't consented to making the e-book versions of all my work, which is annoying to some of my publishers. — Adrian Tomine

Authors can get an attitude of us-against-them when it comes to publishers, but learning how authors and editors can work together taught me to look at my work in a different way and to make that work as solid as possible before it ever goes to the publisher. — Tracie Peterson

Before one knows it, he's nearly through with the book and then must continue so as to 'find out what happens at the end.' These are the sort of book of which publishers say 'Once you pick it up, you can't put it down,'and one of the major reasons you don't want to put it down is that you don't ever want to pick it up again. — Lawrence Rust Hills

I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without being either good business men or fine judges of literature. — George Bernard Shaw

The original idea was to make it easy to publish content on the Web and find an audience. What we learned from publishers is that the thing they want the most is more readers and more revenue. — Trip Adler

Morgan was sent copies and decided to sue both publishers for libel. — David Cordingly

The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since. — William Faulkner

I like to have projects that belong completely to me. If done right, it can also pay better. But the majority of my projects are still destined for publishers. — Jeremy Robinson

Agents are deal makers, and they're really, really good at making deals. But they're also exceptionally helpful after the deal is made - agents act as a good intermediary between authors and publishers whenever disagreements come up. — John Romaniello

Publishers like a good buzz, and negative responses sell books just as well as positive ones. — Richard Dawkins

HarperCollins Publishers Inc. — John Burley

The artist is the lowest form of life on the rung of the ladder. The publishers are usually businessmen who deal with businessmen. They deal with promotional people. They deal with financial people. They deal with accountants. They deal with people who work on higher levels. They deal with tax people, but have absolutely no interest in artists, in individual artists, especially very young artists. — Jack Kirby

My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers. — Mario Benedetti

As a writer, it's important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God. — Amish Tripathi

Relationships between writers and publishers are of course very strange and change all the time, rather like a see-saw. — Anthony Horowitz

Authors will make far more on those ebooks through direct sales than publishers are offering. There is no incentive for authors to sell those rights to traditional publishers which means, in the fairly short term, publishers run out of material to sell. — Michael A. Stackpole

Though the blame cannot be placed entirely on publishers, I do think a more diverse pool of editors would go a long way toward broadening the perspective. Our role is to work together to create books that act as wide-open doors - books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay. — Jerry Pinkney

No, no, there must be a limit to the baseness even of publishers. — Dorothy L. Sayers

When I joined Time Inc., one of the things that was important to me was ensuring that our content is where consumers want to read it. The Apple newsstand is an important place where a lot of consumers are. And Apple is really becoming a good partner to publishers. We are confident we can deliver a experience for our readers that 's really good. — Laura Lang

Rejection has nothing to do with the quality of your work. If you believe in your product, it's just a matter of time before someone publishes it. My trick was this: send out ten letters to agents or publishers. Each time you receive a rejection, send out another three. Repeat until you've achieved what you desire. — Noah Charney

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

I believe that all brands will become storytellers, editors and publishers, all stores will become magazines, and all media companies will become stores. There will be too many of all of them. The strongest ones, the ones who offer the best customer experience, will survive. — Natalie Massenet

It was all a back-handed blessing, and my friends were the ones who kept the faith, read my work, and urged me to submit it to publishers (by sending it out for me - they would not hear no for an answer. — Leslie Banks

Very much on the defensive, I admitted that I liked to read.
"Sure," Sammy said, "I never said I had anything against reading books ... "
"The publishers will be relieved to know that," I tried to insert, but Sammy was too quick for me and was already rounding the bend of his next sentence. — Budd Schulberg

The publishers of Superman comic books, National Periodical Publications [later DC Comics], killed my days, murdered my nights, choked my happiness, strangled my career. I consider National's executives economic murderers, money-mad monsters.
I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse of the Superman movie! — Jerry Siegel

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

There are a lot of bottlenecks to getting published. Publishers are only one of them. Having the time is another one. Feeling entitled is another one. — Denise Mina

Most publishers seem very reluctant to publish short story collections at all; they bring them out in paperback, often disguised as novels. — John Sladek

I'd been sending out demos and CDs for years. I knew my stuff was good enough, but I was getting nowhere. Then, three people - my future manager and two publishers - happened to send one of my tracks to EMI publishing in the same week. All of a sudden, they were interested! — Calvin Harris

I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will. — Helen Garner

My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 27 For — Thomas Nelson Publishers

The author of the extremely successful Twilight series was rejected by 14 different publishers before the 15th picked up Twilight. What would all the tweens do if Bella and Edward hadn't been brought to life?! — Stephenie Meyer

The chronology was for the convenience of the reader who may be unfamiliar with some of the names and events mentioned. My publisher persuaded me to cut it, on account of the wartime paper shortage. — William T. Vollmann

In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious - unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer's life can be distressing - negative reviews, rejections by magazines, difficulties with editors, publishers, book designers - disappointment with one's own work, on a daily/hourly basis! - it seemed to me a very good idea to shield Ray from this side of my life as much as I could. For what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too? — Joyce Carol Oates

I got signed with the songwriting deal when I was sixteen and they were really great - my publishers, who to this day are still my publishers and are like my musical family, my second family - they took me in and taught me what a good song is. — Lights

Well, it wasn't really a decision on my part although you always hope as an author that a book that goes out of print somehow winds up back in print. These days publishers like to put out-of-print books into e-book form, but I really wanted to do an update. — Bob Colacello

It wasn't the Supreme Court that expelled God from our public school classrooms. It was the textbook publishers. — James J. Kilpatrick

Girls, we're fiction editors
we know how to plot, and we know how to cover our tracks. We can teach Jerry Key a lesson he'll never forget. — Stephanie Bond

In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for. — Michelle Paver

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria. — A. N. Wilson