Publishers Quotes

Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread

Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.

Poets are never allowed to be mediocre by the gods, by men or by publishers.

I think the media is very much like the inside-the-Beltway crowd. They're not average Americans themselves. They're under a lot of pressure from editors and publishers.

Writers are essential. Readers are essential. Publishers are not.

Publishers seem to be in an alcoholic haze most of the time. Well, the publishers have no idea what a writer is.

What the podcast novelists do isnt all that different from what self-publishers do. We put the books out in different formats, but the goal is the same: build an audience and attract a publisher.

I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

In Poland, for a while, my books all had cartoons on the cover. I trust my publishers in each country to know what works in their individual markets.

Publishers are all cohorts of the devil; there must be a special hell for them somewhere.

Good publishers – as one former publisher aptly put it – are market-makers in a world where it is attention, not content, that is scarce.

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

I read whatever the publisher sends me.

The Dancing Girls of Lahore was offered to dozens of British publishers and was turned down by everyone. It is still on offer in the U.K., but I'm not confident there will be any takers.

Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing.

I started with small-press publishers, who were willing to publish all sorts of forms. I didn't move to the larger presses until they knew what they were getting in for.

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

Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.

I don't like 'graphic novel.' It's a word that publishers created for the bourgeois to read comics without feeling bad. Comics is just a way of narrating - it's just a media type.

The books are all very, very different so the publishers really had to be different too.

Publishers are private businesspeople who must reach their economic goals independently.

Jonah Peretti is one of the smartest web publishers out there. And Buzzfeed is an aggressive and dynamic company.

I don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.

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

I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way.

I am disappointed by this controversy surrounding A Million Little Pieces because I rely on the publishers to define the category that a book falls within and also the authenticity of the work.

A publisher is simply a useful middle-man.

The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers.

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.

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

Publishers have in-house editors, but I hire my own before I submit the work to publishers. They appreciate it and I feel more confident about the material.

Publishers are humane men, and rarely commit crimes. Authors, however, are a hardened set, who usually perpertrate a felony every time they issue a book.

Publishers of course have you altogether in their grip; if they say you must do a thing you have jolly well got to do it.

Do they [the publishers of Murphy] not understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and thatto compress it further can only make it more obscure?

There's always tons of crap music people are trying to sell us - [it's] the same way with publishers and galleries.

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.

The Internet will make every enterprise a publisher.

Being with a small publisher has been huge. They bat for me for everything.

Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.

The model of publishing is changing and its happening right now, but most publishers are so frightened, they just dont know how to embrace it.

Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers.

It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.

My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.

[Mid-list writers are now] less greed on the part of both publishers and chain booksellers. It is easier for them to publish and sell only blockbusters and leave the real work to small presses.

Books are savaged and careers destroyed by surly snots who write anonymous reviews and publishers can't be bothered to protest this institutionalized corruption.

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

My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.

Most publishers, like most writers, are ruined by their successes.

It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question why they’re writing at all. To have one’s writing rejected is like you, yourself, are being rejected.

We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price and staked everything on it.