Self Publishing Book Quotes & Sayings

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

I have a hardcore attitude: a "self-published, ghost-written book" is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge or emotions that you want to express. When
people read a book - particularly a self-published one - they have the right to expect that it's the person's writing, not cleaned-up dictation or slapping a name on a book that someone else wrote. — Guy Kawasaki

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

When self-publishing started, it was mostly people who really couldn't write. And they just wanted to get their book out, and they couldn't get traditional deals. — Caroline Leavitt

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

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

Elevation Book Publishing drives each book to their highest peak and afford authors the opportunity to rise to their full potential. We create thriving partnerships. — Rhonda Wilson

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

My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool. — Junot Diaz

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

I had been self-publishing for a number of years at that stage and selling my books at markets around Melbourne - little pocket books. I'd make them for 10 cents and sell them for a dollar. But I knew there was an audience who loved silly stuff so I just kept plugging away. — Andy Griffiths

Anyone who says it's easy to self-publish a book is either lying or doing a shitty job. — Nan McCarthy

I would have died, before a literary agent ever committed to my book. This is why I chose to empower myself by self publishing. — Mary Sage Nguyen

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing. — Daniel Clowes

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

My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world. — V.S. Naipaul

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

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

I wrote a blog post about how the book is different from the blog and why I chose to go the self-publishing route. I wrote guests posts for blogs like Techcrunch, which helped immensely and for which I'm very grateful. I used my social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Quora, and Pinterest. — James Altucher

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

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

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

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

Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they're salacious and funny and self-reflective. — Michael Showalter

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

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

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

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

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area. — Jerry B. Jenkins

Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs. "I don't know how to sell this," they explain, frowning, as though it's your fault. "I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this." In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence; only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job. — Donald E. Westlake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

I came to apologize for my dickhead brother."
He took another bite of his apple, his eyes intent on Becca.
"And to thank Becky for last night."
"Becca," she snapped.
He smiled.
"I know."
Oh. Oh.
Kemmerer, Brigid (2012-04-24). Storm (Elemental Book 1) (Kindle Locations 811-814). Kensington Publishing Corp. Kindle Edition. — Brigid Kemmerer

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

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

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

This is what happens when the discourse of publishing, defined and driven by spoken and written language, is talked about in exactly the same vocabulary and syntax as any widgetmaking industry. Books are reformulated as 'product' - like screwdrivers or flea-bombs or soap - and the majority of writers are perceived as typists with bad attitudes. — Suzette Haden Elgin

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

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

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