Selling Books Quotes & Sayings

If the books are selling, the money will follow. — Larry Kirshbaum

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks. — Nolan Bushnell

These days, we've got booksellers in cities, in deserts, and in the middle of a rain forest; we've got travelling bookshops, and bookshops underground. We've got bookshops in barns, in caravans and in converted Victorian railway stations. We've even got booksellers selling books in the middle of a war.
Are bookshops still relevant? They certainly are.
All bookshops are full of stories, and stories want to be heard. — Jen Campbell

I do not do free e-books. I occasionally like to eat that thing you people call "food". — Carla H. Krueger

I credit Podiobooks and the free audio podcasts for helping me develop the audience I needed when I started selling my books in text forms. — Nathan Lowell

The book looked doomed, assailed on all sides by those who'd see it superseded by the synthetic-new and those who didn't give two shiny ones. With the recession forging ahead with renewed vigour, bookselling too was going the way of papyrus, taking with it what was left of Richard's self-esteem, his beer money and his comedic persona. — Charlie Hill

Being a best-selling author just means the world for me. Some of my happiest memories, growing up, are being at book stores and reading books I couldn't afford, as a kid, and the midnight parties, waiting for the next Harry Potter book. The fact that I have that straw in my cap means more to me than anything I've ever accomplished before. — Chris Colfer

Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new 'celebrity' and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it! — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

It reminds me of a friend of mine who was very interested in a French philosophy called deconstruction. He advertised to me as one of deconstruction's selling points that deconstruction deconstructs itself. I couldn't help responding, if deconstruction deconstructs itself, why bother reading its long, boring books? Why not go for a jog instead, or reread one of Patrick O'Brian's tremendous tales of the sea? — Eric Kaplan

By believing that only some of our students will ever develop a love of books and reading, we ignore those who do not fall into books and reading on their own. We renege on our responsibility to teach students how to become self-actualized readers. We are selling our students short by believing that reading is a talent and that lifelong reading behaviors cannot be taught. — Donalyn Miller

Readers often tell me after they've read the books, they find it difficult to sum up the plot in a simple way. My response is, "It's a story about the love a father shares for his daughter. All the rest is just filler."
- MJ Mancini, on his best-selling trilogy, "Revelation". — M.J. Mancini

When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long. — Willie Nelson

A good bookshop is not just about selling books from shelves, but reaching out into the world and making a difference. — David Almond

I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers, and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level, the transition to digital isn't something I welcome wholeheartedly. — Barry Eisler

You are not an "author," you are a writer. If your books are still selling like hotcakes ten years after your demise, THEN you're an author. — H.P. Oliver

Early in 1967 Highsmith's agent told her why her books did not sell in paperback in America. It was, said Patricia Schartle Myrer, because they were 'too subtle', combined with the fact that none of her characters were likeable. 'Perhaps it is because I don't like anyone,' Highsmith replied. 'My last books may be about animals'. — Andrew Wilson

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

I'm going to go do this crazy thing. I'm going to start this company selling books online. — Jeff Bezos

Despite the promise of four days of sun and overly sweet wine, Richard was sporting a sour puss. But then that was to be expected - he sold books for a living, after all. — Charlie Hill

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it. — Ann Patchett

Most of them won't have a book in the house, though, when they have to, they'll talk about the latest book that's selling millions of copies around the world. Our readers may not read books, but they are fascinated by great eccentric painters who sell for billions. — Umberto Eco

I think of all media, television is the most powerful when it comes to selling books, because when you have a feature film, yeah, there's a rush. But then after that month is over and the movie goes out of release, that's it. — Tess Gerritsen

To be honest I wrote it mainly from the reason and wanting something more than a life something which could explore my life at deeper level. Probably I have done it... probably I haven't done it... what I know is that I won't be for this Century like somebody famous... I will be still average, I can't go on the amazon and starting selling my works... I don't feel comfortable being in that state. — Deyth Banger

I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary. — Mark Helprin

Having pressed publish, and then wondering why 'everyone else' in the world seems to be selling thousands of books, can be a lonely and depressing chapter. Being able to share the reality, and explore the future with a like-minded group of fun individuals, is like turning the page onto a whole new world of opportunity. — Julian Kirkman-Page

If you're selling information - and I have a lot of friends who write a lot of bestselling books and they're selling information. They don't need to have a picture on the cover at all because they are not important. They're secondary to their information. To me, the information is secondary to me. — Larry Winget

I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them. — Ian MacKaye

It's hard selling books in general: companies are merging, editors being laid off, bricks-and-mortar bookstores closing, large chain bookstores squeezing out independents, and online retailers squeezing out chain bookstores. — Christina Baker Kline

Special Agent Brad Wolgast hated Texas. He hated everything about it.
[ ... ] He hated the billboards and the freeways and the faceless subdivisions and the Texas flag, which flew over everything, always as big as a circus tent; he hated the giant pickup trucks everybody drove, no matter that gas was thirteen bucks a gallon and the world was slowly seaming itself to death like a package of peas in a microwave. He hated the boots and the belts and the way people talked, ya'll this and ya'll that, as if they spent the day ropin' and ridin', not cleaning teeth and selling insurance and doing the books, like people did everywhere. — Justin Cronin

Read any of the top-selling business books, all of them talk about moving away from a top down manner of leading to a more inclusive one. It's not happening over night, but if you read the winds of change in most of the democracies in the world we are moving toward shared levels of power. — Elizabeth Lesser

A $3 Cup of Coffee is Worth a Book. — Daniel Marques

People think I'm selling feminism in my books, but what I'm really doing is writing advertising copy for expensive private colleges that most women can't afford anyway. Oh, and try to find a job with a major in English literature. No luck? Joke's on you, sucker! — Mary Gordon

I always loved watching and reading family-friendly mysteries growing up, like the shows Murder, She Wrote and Nancy Drew, and am thrilled to be bringing these New York Times best-selling books right into your living room on the small screen. — Candace Cameron

I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text. — Richard Curtis

Nobody wants to see the truth. Everybody wants to have the fantasy. When I look back at the books I was reading in my childhood were selling some sort of fantasy as well. Most stories are not going to tell the deep suffering of every day. No book prepared me for the suffering I would experience in life because the word "suffering" does not even describe what the suffering is. No story is going to tell you that, and no words can tell you that. — Signe Baumane

Looking over world literature, it is almost impossible to find a single sympathetic representation of a moneylender- or anyway, a professional moneylender, which means by definition one who charges interest. I'm not sure there is another profession (executioners?) with such a consistently bad image. It's especially remarkable when one considers that unlike executioners, usurers often rank among the richest and most powerful people in their communities. Yet the very name, "usurer," evokes images of loan sharks, blood money, pounds of flesh, the selling of souls, and behind them all, the Devil, often represented as himself a kind of usurer, an evil accountant with his books and ledgers. — David Graeber

At a time when there's younger writers starting up and it's inevitable that you're becoming less fashionable, at a time when the industrial pressures apply more and more to books, how do you keep a book you wrote 28 years ago selling well year on year? Because it really is getting harder. — William Boyd

Not that the writers weren't good. I believe in those books and those writers very much. It's just that in the climate it's really hard to keep the lights on and the doors open when you're selling poetry and literature that appeals to a fringe audience. — Henry Rollins

I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell. — Stephen Carter

In America there's a tendency to write the same book over and over because that's what sells. So in a way, my success in America has come at the expense of what I do. I haven't sold out, and I haven't taken the popular road to writing a best-selling book. I've really bucked the system. So it was necessary for me not to go and find the easy fans, the ones who want something digestible and fast with a happy ending that they can read over and over again no matter how many different books it is. I had to find fans who really wanted to think. Worldwide they all have that in common. — Steven Tyler

You can never learn Sales by reading books and watching videos, you can only get motivated by that.. To learn Sales (telesales) dial 300+ calls daily and (direct field sales) meet at-least 5 clients daily ...
Only customers can teach u sales! — Honeya

There are a few critics overseas, and occasionally a critic will write an astute analysis of the movie. There is value in reading critics that actually have something intelligent to say, but the journalistic community lives in a world of sound bites and literary commerce: selling newspapers, selling books, and they do that simply by trashing things. They don't criticize or analyze them. They simply trash them for the sake of a headline, or to shock people to get them to buy whatever it is they're selling. — George Lucas

I am not a total, complete nitwit when it comes to selling books. I promise you there will be unexpected things. Some of them I don't know yet. She's writing it all herself. — Mary Matalin

We need to be celebrating those who serve us rather than mocking them for the purpose of getting on TV and selling some books. — Jennifer Granholm

They were growing up in the golden age of comic books. Comic strips, or "funnies," had begun appearing in the pages of newspapers in the 1890s. But comic books date only to the 1930s. They'd been more or less invented by Maxwell Charles Gaines (everyone called him Charlie), a former elementary school principal who was working as a salesman for the Eastern Color Printing Company, in Waterbury, Connecticut, when he got the idea that the pages of funnies that appeared in the Sunday papers could be printed cheaply, stapled together, and sold as magazines, or "comic books." In 1933, Gaines started selling the first comic book on newsstands; it was called Funnies on Parade. — Jill Lepore

One of the things I hear a lot from people is how they found my book, or how they've shared it with other people.
This always warms my bitter old heart, not just because I like selling more books, (though I do) but because reccomending a book to a friend is one of the most sincere forms of flattery there is. If you read someone I wrote and like it enough to tell a friend, that means I've done something right. That means more to me than any sort of professional review ... . — Patrick Rothfuss

So for those of you who haven't read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly. — Ann Coulter

Occasionally, I hear grumbles about everything being a series or a trilogy, but apart from the question of them maybe selling more books, I think that there's a real problem in trying to introduce a new world or a new concept while also getting your reader to pay close attention to your characters and themes. — Ann Leckie

Somewhat sadly, the survival of many bookstores now depends on selling merchandise other than books. — Julia Glass

When reading a book, you are sold what some writer thought. When reading a newspaper, you are sold what someone did, and, what some advertiser made. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For me, photography only stopped because I was selling books. — Ben Schott

We finish our own story. The details of our journey are still a mystery. — Steven Cuoco

I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next. — Fred Saberhagen

If you're creating something that has some sort of cultural currency - if the idea is getting out there - then that will probably yield money in some form, whether it's through selling art or selling books or being asked to give a lecture. — Shepard Fairey

If I send all the books that I faithfully wrote overseas, would that, for any chance, be considered work-shipping?? — Ana Claudia Antunes

I was astonished to learn in one of these best-selling books (on church life) that the size of my church parking lot had far more to do with how things fared in my congregation than my choice of texts in preaching. I was being lied to and I knew it. — Eugene H. Peterson

When you realize my best selling books are 'Owl Moon,' the 'How Do Dinosaur' books, and 'Devil's Arithmetic,' how can the public make sense of that! I have fans who think I only write picture books or only write SF and fantasy. I have fanatics of my poetry and are stunned to find out I write prose, too! — Jane Yolen

Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts. — Jo Walton

From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising. — M.J. Rose

I'm all for selling books, but when guys are burning my house down, that's where I draw the line. — Robert Kirkman

Goldman Sachs itself - and so Goldman was in the position of selling bonds to its customers created by its own traders, so they might bet against them. Secondly, there was a crude, messy, slow, but acceptable substitute for Mike Burry's credit default swaps: the actual cash bonds. According to a former Goldman derivatives trader, Goldman would buy the triple-A tranche of some CDO, pair it off with the credit default swaps AIG sold Goldman that insured the tranche (at a cost well below the yield on the tranche), declare the entire package risk-free, and hold it off its balance sheet. Of course, the whole thing wasn't risk-free: If AIG went bust, the insurance was worthless, and Goldman could lose everything. Today Goldman Sachs is, to put it mildly, unhelpful when asked to explain exactly what it did, and this lack of transparency extends to its own shareholders. If a team of forensic accountants went over Goldman's books, they'd be shocked at just how good Goldman is at hiding things, — Michael Lewis

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Book depository is nothing new; there've been outlets selling books internationally via mail order for many decades - the only change is that it's now easier to find and use such services. — Charles Stross

Education is the process of selling someone on books. — Douglas Wilson

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely. — Ludwig Von Mises

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 tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down. — Richard Curtis