Publishing A Book Quotes & Sayings

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write. — George Orwell

You need to be naive enough to do things differently. No big publishing house would have allowed us to co-create a fully designed, four color business book in landscape format - because it was contrary to the publishing industry logic. However, we thought of Business Model Generation as a product, not just a book - similar to Apple products. — Alexander Osterwalder

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can't photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up. — Sloane Crosley

Jack Byrne's Fiction House became known for its powerful, invincible female heroes. At a time when many publishers had none, Fiction House employed more than twenty women artists.46 The popularity of comics soared. Gaines, who did not tend to hire women to do anything except secretarial work, began publishing All-American Comics in 1939. That same year, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an entire comic book all to himself; he could also be heard on the radio.47 The first episode of Batman appeared in Detective Comics #27, in May 1939. Three months later, Byrne Holloway Marston, staff artist for the Marston Chronicle, drew the first installment of The Adventures of Bobby Doone. — Jill Lepore

To the people who insist they really do have a great idea but they just can't write, I'd say that given some of the books I've read, or at least started to read, it would appear that not being able to write is absolutely no obstacle whatsoever to writing a book and securing a publishing contract. Though becoming famous in some other field first may help. — Iain Banks

Why did Freud write a book about which he had such doubts? We can only conjecture. Peter Gay wrote that "it is highly plausible that some of the impulses guiding Freud's arguments in Totem and Taboo emerged from his hidden life; in some respects the book represents a round in his never finished wrestling bout with Jacob Freud." Gay also mentions that Freud realized he was "publishing scientific fantasies. — Armand M. Nicholi Jr.

Publishing is a business and writing is an art. The two have to be crammed together despite the clearly different motivations behind them. — Michelle M. Pillow

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing. — Erica Jong

I often think publishing a book is like doing a poo. Once it's ready for the world, you have to relinquish that control and let nature take its course. A few will be impressed by your creation, others will be disgusted. Plus, no one will enjoy your success and achievement in producing it as much as you did. — H.O. Charles

OUTLANDER A Delta Book PUBLISHING HISTORY Delacorte Press hardcover edition published 1991 Delta trade paperback edition/July 2001 Published by Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc. — Diana Gabaldon

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

So, while I gave up the notions of publishing at that time, I never stopped editing and refining that book. A few years later, in 1987, I thought I had it ready to go out again. — R.A. Salvatore

Self publishing' is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed! — Phil Simpkin

Marketing isn't sleazy car salesman tactics.
Marketing isn't tricking people into buying.
Marketing isn't unethical.
Marketing isn't intrusive self-promotion.
Marketing is two things: (1) creating lasting connections with people, through (2) a focus on being relentlessly helpful. — Tim Grahl

[ ... ]he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked
insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words
Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most
remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in. — Douglas Adams

There's only one thing more frightening than being asked to do a book tour, and that's not being asked to do a book tour. — Gerald Petievich

McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object. — Dave Eggers

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be. — Margaret Atwood

I was in the second year of my PhD when I first had the idea - I'd recently started working as a translator, which meant firstly that I was hearing about amazing-sounding books from other translators, and also that I was getting enough of an insider's view of the publishing industry to be aware of all the implicit biases that made it so difficult for these books to ever get published, especially if they weren't from European languages (harder to discover, editors can't read the original, lack of funding programmes, authors who don't speak English). — Deborah Smith

I sent a lot of publishing ideas to my publisher, about 30 of them. Each time except 3, i got a "rejection letter". This is basically what a rejection letter is like:
Hello Pathetic Moron,
We read your book. It sucked. Don't send us another one. If you do, we will run over your grandmother with a bus. Don't Do It.
From, Your Publisher — James Dashner

The intellectual summits of my life had been completing my dissertation and publishing my book, and that was already more than ten years ago. Intellectual summits? Summits, full stop. In those days, at least, I'd felt justified. Since then I hadn't produced anything except a few short articles for the Journal of Nineteenth-Century Studies, plus a couple for The Literary Review, when some new book touched on my field of expertise. My articles were clear, incisive and brilliant. They were generally well received, especially since I never missed a deadline. But was that enough to justify a life? — Michel Houellebecq

We do our best when we are in over our heads, and we eventually forget about how panicked we felt at the time. That's one of the amazing aspects about book publishing. Yes, it is conservative by nature and rich with tradition, but every morning on the job I still feel like a freshman. There is still so much to learn about serving the church through publishing, and that is its enduring joy. — Ann Byle

The total cost of printing was £1,239. 11s. 6d. In addition to Johnson's £1,575, at least £1,500 was spent on paper - a large, though not freakish, figure, since the purchase of paper was usually reckoned to account for half the cost of publishing a book. Still, this meant the outlay was in the region of £4,500. — Henry Hitchings

As a book author, it's your responsibility to cast a vision for your book about the length and appearance before you pitch the idea to a publisher. — W. Terry Whalin

A comic book publisher says he's trying to increase voter turnout in the presidential election by publishing comic books about John McCain and Barack Obama. Yeah, the publisher said that the election comic books are targeted at first-time voters and long-time virgins. — Conan O'Brien

Between my first book tour, in 2003, and the next one, in 2009, many of the places I visited had undergone a significant transformation or vanished: Cody's in Berkeley, seven branch libraries in Philadelphia, twelve of the fourteen bookstores in Harvard Square, Harry W. Schwartz in Milwaukee and, in my own hometown of Washington, D.C., Olsson's and Chapters. — Azar Nafisi

Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers - they're not by a long shot - but because today's kids love to write to authors. — Rodman Philbrick

There is only two kind of #books .First one is by some #famous person and Second one makes a person #famous . — Tushar Upreti

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

I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't. — Akhil Sharma

Other than being an artist, I've also wanted to be a writer since I was able to read. The simple fact is that I've aslo been a writer my whole life. Thanks to the magic of blogs and self-publishing, anyone can be a writer now. In fact, even before all of these new and exciting outlets became available anyone still could be a writer. It's actually a simple process. Just begin writing. You don't need anyone's permission, or a degree; hell, you don't even need an audience. Just write. The act of writing makes you a writer. So now that I've completed this book, I dub myself an Official Writer. — Cee Jay Inky Jones

The current publishing scene is extremely good for the big, popular books. They sell them brilliantly, market them and all that. It is not good for the little books. And really valuable books have been allowed to go out of print. In the old days, the publishers knew that these difficult books, the books that appeal only to a minority, were very productive in the long run. Because they're probably the books that will be read in the next generation. — Doris Lessing

Publishing a new book is like adding anything new to your life--marriage, a child, a new job, a new house. It takes time to adjust to a different status. — Annette Wood

I learned that you have to respect how much time and work a writer has put into their book. I always give the writer I'm publishing a good deal of control in shaping the book and figuring out how it looks, but I'll make suggestions on how to make it stronger. — Kevin Sampsell

Three carefully stringed words are worth more than a book of gibberish. It's not the word count but the impact of those words that counts. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live ... or live for long. — John McGahern

I started as an artist and I had a side job moving some heavy boxes for a publishing company. They had just gotten a Mac for their art department, the department that creates the book covers. I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York. They picked my jacket and when the art director got back to Boston, he wanted to know who designed it and I said, "Me." He was like, "The box guy?" — Biz Stone

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

The good people who are publishing this book have a concern that they have expressed to me. The concern is that readers like yourself will read my history of the Baudelaire orphans and attempt to imitate some of the things they do. So at this point in the story, in order to mollify the publishers - the word 'mollify' here means 'get them to stop tearing their hair out in worry' - please allow me to give you a piece of advice, even though I don't know anything about you. The piece of advice is as follows: If you ever need to get to Curdled Cave in a hurry, do not, under any circumstances, steal a boat and attempt to sail across Lake Lachrymose during a hurricane, because it is very dangerous and the chance of your survival are practically zero. — Lemony Snicket

Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that's one-third of a triathlon (authoring, publishing, and entrepreneuring). — Guy Kawasaki

Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own. — Thomas Jefferson

I think that writing texts, publishing texts, selling texts in a physical book store is one of the important tools for breeding this new generation. — Alexander Mamut

This has been a record breaking month for book sales for Mikazuki Publishing House. The moon can only stay hidden behind the cloud for so long. Eventually the cloud moves away and the moon can light up the darkness with its magnificence. — Kambiz Mostofizadeh

I thought, 'Okay, what's going to be my edge, and how am I going to define what I'm doing differently?' Once I had that key idea of the software developer as an artist, once I had that idea, a whole bunch of other ideas flowed from that, because I realized that I need to go study the music industry, I need to study the book publishing and Hollywood and figure out how they do things, why they do them that way, and then I need to borrow, and rearrange, the things that they're doing to fit my industry so that I can invent and create this new industry. — Trip Hawkins

I began illustrating children's books because of a growing disillusionment with the sort of work I was doing in the advertising industry. Book publishing offered me the chance to be far more creative. — Graeme Base

The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter. — Karen Joy Fowler

I never thought I was capable of writing a whole book until Ursula K. Le Guin, with whom I worked briefly in publishing, said, 'you already wrote one (referencing a screenplay), you just need to add the details. — E.L. Sayers

I wish that the act of publishing a book was less of a nerve-wracking experience. — Charlie Huston

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon. — Piers Anthony

Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life. It is because I am too diffused. I have decided never to write another novel. I have fifty 'subjects' I could write about; and they would be competent enough. If there is one thing we can be sure of, it is that competent and informative novels will continue to pour from the publishing houses. I have only one, and the least important, of the qualities necessary to write at all, and that is curiosity. It is the curiosity of the journalist. — Doris Lessing

Aside from the movies, examples of positive-Black Swan businesses are: some segments of publishing, scientific research, and venture capital. In these businesses, you lose small to make big. You have little to lose per book and, for completely unexpected reasons, any given book might take off. The downside is small and easily controlled. The problem with publishers, of course, is that they regularly pay up for books, thus making their upside rather limited and their downside monstrous. (If you pay $10 million for a book, your Black Swan is it not being a bestseller.) Likewise, while technology can carry a great payoff, paying for the hyped-up story, as people did with the dot-com bubble, can make any upside limited and any downside huge. It is the venture capitalist who invested in a speculative company and sold his stake to unimaginative investors who is the beneficiary of the Black Swan, not the "me, too" investors. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Love is precious, and shouldn't be wasted on every passing whim, or it will mean nothing by the time you truly wish to share it with someone who matters." I said softly.

Silvers, Shayne (2012-10-08). Obsidian Son: A Novel In The Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Series (The Temple Chronicles Book 1) (p. 194). Argento Publishing. Kindle Edition. — Shayne Silvers

Books are such quiet things - created in silence, read in silence - yet publishing a book has become a very noisy business. I've been noisy, too. I felt like I had to be in order to connect with my readers. — Ellen Potter

I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters. — Alan Dershowitz

As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it's our literary heritage that is at risk - a vital part of our culture. — Sara Sheridan

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

One of the reasons I wanted to write this column, I think, is because I assumed that the cultural highlight of my month would arrive in book form, and that's true, for probably eleven months of the year. Books are, let's face it, better than everything else ... . Even if you love movies and music as much as you do books, it's still, in any given four week period, way, way more likely you'll find a great book that you haven't read than a great movie you haven't seen, or a great album you haven't heard: the assiduous consumer will eventually exhaust movies and music ... the feeling everyone has with literature: that we can't get through the good novels published in the last six months, let alone those published since publishing began. — Nick Hornby

I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author. — Jennifer Gilmore

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

I remember going into a bookshop, and the only book I saw with a black child on the cover was 'A Thief in the Village' by James Berry, and I thought, 'Is this still the state of publishing?' Then I thought, 'Either I can whine about it or try to do something about it.' — Malorie Blackman

I loved publishing; I loved working in the book industry, but I've been writing pretty much nonstop since I was 19. I realized very early on that I would need a day job, and I wanted one that was in books. — Garth Nix

People in the newspaper industry saw the web as a newspaper. People in TV saw the web as TV, and people in book publishing saw it as a weird kind of potential book. But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing. — Paul Ford

I turned on my heel and left the building. With only £4.76 in the bank, and my subscription to 'Men Only' due, things were looking bleak. Seeing that Keith Moore had apparently purloined Sting's money, though at this time, he had not been yet convicted of the offence, it seemed to me that he was a better bet for a loan than Sting was. — James Berryman

In TIME June 7, 2010
On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune:
"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers ... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175." - 5/26/10 — Garrison Keillor

Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. — Don Marquis

In 1976, I read a book by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and knew immediately that I, too, could write a historical romance. It took me a year to complete the manuscript. I was a forty-year-old Scarborough housewife who knew no one in publishing. — Virginia Henley

It really gets me when the critics say I haven't done enough for the economy. I mean, look what I've done for the book publishing industry. You've heard some of the titles. 'Big Lies,' 'The Lies of George W. Bush,' 'The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.' I'd like to tell you I've read each of these books, but that'd be a lie. — George W. Bush

When I wanted to quit smoking cannabis a few years ago and found that I couldn't do it under my own steam I went in search of a self-help book to show me the way. Annoyingly all I could find were books on how to cultivate the damn stuff. So to exact my revenge on the world of publishing I decided to one day write that book myself. — Chris Sullivan

Anyone wishing to buy the film rights for a rather large sum can contact my publisher and anyone wishing to put me in the top 100 wealthiest people in the UK, please send cheques or Postal Orders to me care of my publisher. — James Berryman

I certainly think that the publishing houses have to learn more about this informal network of literary blogging and get over the idea that sending an author on a book tour - to Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles - is a successful model anymore. — Jay McInerney

I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made. — Lauren Oliver

The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event. — Salman Rushdie

You'll learn that the key to a great book is editing - grinding, buffing, and polishing - not writing. — Guy Kawasaki

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown. — Stephenie Meyer

Diabetic Diet. The premise of this book is to enable the reader to choose healthy foods by following a healthier more nutritious diet plan. — Speedy Publishing

Publishing a book is like planting a vegetable seed. The first day your book is out there is the same as seeing the first sprout from the ground. Is it ready for harvest? Obviously not. The fruit of your labor is still to come so long as you continue to nurture the soil by being persistent in letting readers know your book exists. If you give up on this process too early, your seed will dry up and be consumed by a most merciless sun. — Kevin Ortegel

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

This is a book about the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. You might even add a seventh, retail stores, which Jobs did not quite revolutionize but did reimagine. In addition, he opened the way for a new market for digital content based on apps rather than just websites. Along the way he produced not only transforming products but also, on his second try, a lasting company, endowed with his DNA, that is filled with creative designers and daredevil engineers who could carry forward his vision. In August 2011, right before he stepped down as CEO, the enterprise he started in his parents' garage became the world's most valuable company. — Walter Isaacson

I sighed. "What's a couple of bullets to the chest when compared to a grenade? Bulletproof vests are great things. Every girl should have one."

Blain, RJ (2014-05-11). Inquisitor (Witch & Wolf Book 1) (Kindle Locations 1452-1453). Pen & Page Publishing. Kindle Edition. — R.J. Blain

Book publishing was never a heaven "run by editors", and it is by no means today a hell "run by accountants." If our "sole interest" was "instant profit," not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn't be in book publishing at all. — Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan. — Richard Bach

Many people have related the process of being an author to that of being a parent. Writing your book is like the pregnancy part. Developing your book is part of who you are and is constantly there. You are always thinking about how great it will be, but it is just the beginning. Towards the end your anticipation and anxiety grow. And then you finally reach the publishing process - which is like the delivery. But then you are left with a lifetime of book rearing. The real journey doesn't end at publication, it begins. — Shelley Hitz

Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment
there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world. — Sergei Lukyanenko

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

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

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

Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo. — Paul Goodman

Anybody can write a book. But writing it well and making it sell - that's the hard part. — Jay Taylor

What sells a book sells a book, same in traditional or self-publishing. You gotta shake your tail feathers. — Joni Rodgers

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

Publishing is a very mysterious business. It is hard to predict what kind of sale or reception a book will have, and advertising seems to do very little good. — Thomas Wolfe

You have made some notes, read some writing books, and done some research. Mostly what you've done is talk about writing a book. An idea for a book is not a book; it is a waste of time. There is no singular thing that makes someone a writer, but there is one thing that makes someone a joke
talking about writing a book without doing any work. — Pat Walsh

A good book is not the same as a successful one. — Johnny Rich

When I left college I thought - based on a staggeringly inadequate understanding of how the world worked - that I might like to go into book publishing. — Lev Grossman

Until I became a nurse, no one had ever asked me to sign a book contract. I had been writing for decades, read thousands of books, and even worked in publishing for 10 years. Who knew that nursing would be my break? — Steven Amsterdam

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 with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book ... — Winifred Holtby

I got a couple of different contacts from publishing companies saying they'd be interested in a book about my work: not a kiss-and-tell book, which I specifically put in the contract. Just a book about my work and what I did. — Linda Ronstadt