Publisher Quotes

I didn't see eye to eye with young Barry Bingham," the publisher, Hollenbach says. "I told him respectfully that I didn't think there was anything wrong with this city that a handful of well-placed funerals wouldn't cure.") ~ Alec Macgillis

decade after the first edition of this book was published, Yan Wong and I met in the fitting surroundings of the Oxford Museum of Natural History to discuss the possibility of producing a new, tenth anniversary edition. Yan, once my undergraduate pupil, had been employed as my research assistant during the writing of the original edition, before he left for his lecturing position in Leeds and his career as a television presenter. He played an enormously important part in the conception and execution of the first edition, and he was credited as joint author of several of the chapters. During the course of our discussion ten years on, we realised that much new information had come in, especially from the molecular genetics laboratories of the world. Yan undertook the bulk of the revision and I proposed to the publisher that this time he should be properly credited as joint author of the whole book. ~ Richard Dawkins

A newspaper publisher. In the late 1800s the United States and Spain were warming up for a war over Cuba, and Hearst sent an illustrator to Cuba to make pictures of the event. When the illustrator got there, he sent a telegram to Hearst saying that as far as he could see, there was no war coming and that he was going home. Hearst sent back that he should stay and said, 'You furnish the pictures, and I will furnish the war.' And he did. ~ John Scalzi

Eve was tall. Her face had cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you've heard of him, she said.
Her life was one in which everything was left undone - letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more hopeless than she. At least she was gay. She stepped from her littered doorway in pretty clothes, like a woman who lives in the barrio walking to a limousine, stray dogs and dirt on the way. ~ James Salter

In general, though, one should never forget the role money plays in shaping the writer's life, and the life inevitably informs the work. My own position is that I always want to convince a publisher to give me adequate money for what I want to do. At the same time, what I want to do is to arrive at full expression in a way that seduces, that pleases people in a way they didn't expect to be pleased, or even want to be pleased. ~ Tim Parks

Every author knows what a stimulus it is to have an understanding publisher. ~ Gisela Richter

I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish. ~ Nora Roberts

We as artists are actively encouraged - by other authors, your agent, publisher, and society - not to think about money, strategy, how to manage your career, how to create a brand, because we're supposed to focus on the art. ~ Cassandra Clare

Remain humble in your journey as an author and your audience will embrace you. Remain grateful for every publicity opportunity that comes your way, and the media will embrace you. ~ Linda F. Radke

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

Gutenberg made everybody a reader. Xerox makes everybody a publisher. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Sharing the code just seems like The Right Thing to Do, it costs us rather little, but it benefits a lot of people in sometimes very significant ways. There are many university research projects, proof of concept publisher demos, and new platform test beds that have leveraged the code. Free software that people value adds wealth to the world. ~ John Carmack

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 always think about Katharine Graham - she was the publisher of The Washington Post. In her autobiography she talks about the way her parents met. Her father was, I think, in New York just walking by on his way home and looked into a store and saw the lady that became his wife. It was just pure luck. And she said that it once again reminds her of the role that luck and chance play in our life. I really believe that, too. ~ Owen Wilson

During this time, Ainsworth met Charles Dickens and introduced the young writer to the publisher Macrone and to George Cruikshank. Ainsworth also introduced Dickens to ~ William Harrison Ainsworth

Of course it would be great to sell lots and lots of copies of The Beast of Cretacea. But the bottom line for me is to sell enough copies to convince my publisher to let me do a sequel. I spent three years creating the world of Cretacea and the personalities of all the characters who inhabit it. All I want to do now is go back. ~ Todd Strasser

When I worked at Microsoft, I got to go and visit a bunch of different companies. Probably a hundred different companies a year. You'd see all the different ways they'd work. The guys who did Ventura Publisher one day, and then United Airlines the next. You'd see the 12 guys in Texas doing Doom, and then you'd go see Aetna life insurance. ~ Gabe Newell

Amazon makes money differently from a conventional publisher. It is an infrastructure player. ~ Nick Harkaway

Ages ago, when I published 'Amelia's Notebook,' I'd sent it to traditional publishers I'd been working with, but nobody knew what to do with it. Tricycle was this small publisher who didn't know any better, and they took a chance. ~ Marissa Moss

Those reporters, writers, photographers, and editors are the best Americans I know. They cherish the ideals of their imperfect profession and of the Republic whose freedoms, equally imperfect in practice have so often made those ideals real. They want desperately to do good, honorable work. In spite of long hours and low pay, they are insistently professional. They are also brave.

I can't ever forget that in Indochina 65 journalists were killed in the course of recording the truth about that war. . . .Reporters and photographers did not stop dying when Vietnam was over. They have been killed in Lebanon and Nicaragua, in Bosnia and Peru, and in a lot of other places where hard rain falls.

I can't believe that these good men and women died for nothing. I know they didn't. They died because they were the people chosen by the tribe to carry the torch to the back of the cave and tell the others what is there in the darkness. They died because they were serious about the craft they practiced. They died because they believed in the fundamental social need for what they did with a pen, a notebook, a typewriter, or a camera. They didn't die to increase profits for the stockholders. They didn't die to obtain an invitation to some White House dinner for a social-climbing publisher. They died for us.

As readers or journalists, we honor them when we remember that their dying was not part of a plan to make the world cheaper, baser, or dumber. They died to ~ Pete Hamill

Once in 1919, when I was traveling at night by train, I wrote a short story. In the town where the train stopped, I took the story to the publisher of the newspaper who published the story. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

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

Novelists want to be published and need a publisher to decide to print 20,000 copies. So you need to entertain on some level. I want to reach out and connect. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I have to agree with Artforum publisher Charles Guarino: "It's the place where I found the most kindred spirits - enough oddball, overeducated, anachronistic, anarchic people to make me happy." Finally, ~ Sarah Thornton

In pulp fiction it is a rigid convention that the hero's shoulders and the heroine's balcon constantly threaten to burst their bonds, a possibility which keeps the audience in a state of tense expectancy. Unfortunately for the fans, however, recent tests reveal that the wisp of chiffon which stands between the publisher and the postal laws has the tensile strength of drop-forged steel. ~ S.J Perelman

As things go digital, the notion of new editions will go away. A publisher can add video and assessment content at scale, make the change in 30 seconds and it's just a software update. ~ Osman Rashid

Your writing can be chosen by one publisher and hated by all readers, or it can be rejected by one publisher and loved by all readers. Most of the time it's somewhere in between, but either way, don't let rejection stop you from being hated. ~ Jarod Kintz

How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good. ~ Mark Twain

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

Although I still write, research and investigate, my role is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists. ~ Julian Assange

If you're going to have a book published in China, that means that you're going to be subject to in-house censorship at the publisher, and then also, of course, the government has an apparatus that is in charge of making sure that ideas that are considered disruptive or overly critical, that those don't get onto bookstore shelves. ~ Evan Osnos

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher? ~ Dorothy Fields

An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals. ~ Jack Kirby

contained within is the solitary and utter responsibility of the recipient reader. Under no circumstances will any legal responsibility or blame be held against the publisher for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due to the information herein, either directly or indirectly. Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. This is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part or the content within this book without the consent of the author or copyright owner. Legal action will be pursued if this is breached. ~ Crash Course Guides

NMK is a well know maxillofacial surgeon, from India, pens his first poetry book Miracle Mix, favourably reviewed by literary critic Prof. M Krishnan Nair. He says "Every poem has an emotional reality. This is rarely found in modern poetry."
Almost all the poems have a curious mix of humour and pathos. This anthology captures impressions made on poet's mind by various images and objects ranging from passing clouds, flowing streams to life itself. In simple yet evocative manner, the poet introduces the readers to his world of imagination through these poems. Sometimes he becomes one with the elements of nature and at others he narrates an old legend.
Dr. Nikhil Kurien writes under the pen name NMK, he is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

ISBN: 978-93-85020-82-7
Publisher: Zorba Books
book available on Zorba Book Store, Flipkart, amazon, Infibeam and shop clues and on Kindle. ~ NMK

The newspaper publisher who hangs around clubs or becomes a crony to sundry businessmen cannot run a good newspaper. ~ Dennis McDougal

Remember, finding a publisher is a lot like a date. You can submit willfully and keep getting rejected, but in the end, you can always self-publish yourself. ~ Scott Schafer

Maybe just as many women writers as male writers could be billed as the next great American writer by their publisher. Maybe book criticism sections could review an equal amount of female and male writers. Maybe Oprah could start putting some books by women authors in her book club, since most of her audience is women. ~ Jami Attenberg

The reason subscription (and RSS) was abandoned was because in a subscription economy the users are in control. In the on-off model, the competition might be more vicious, but its on the terms of the publisher. Having followers instead of subscribers - where readers have to check back on sites often are barraged with a stream of refreshing content laden with ads - is much better for their bottom line. ~ Ryan Holiday

I knew that if I had gone to the media or a publisher saying that I wanted my books and stories to be published to help other women start their own business~ that I would be rejected by them.
I know this because it has already happened to me many times. ~ Nina Montgomery

My husband, a.k.a. Swede, and I both come from athletic backgrounds, so once we identified the goal - get book published - we attacked it. At any given time, I would have my writing out in 25 various forms - either contests, mentoring critiques, agent/publisher queries, etc. ~ Kresley Cole

Launching Collins in the U.S. fulfills the original vision of the 1989 union of Harper & Row and William Collins. Publishing has clarified the many benefits of working as a global company. I believe that a true 21st century publisher is a global publisher. Harper Collins is well on its way. ~ David D. Friedman

Outside of my work as a comic book creator and co-publisher, I'm an avid gamer. ~ Jim Lee

I tell my students all the time is, for better or worse, no publisher is going to come wrench your story out of your hands before you're ready to let it go. You will have time to take stuff out. You don't have to show it to anybody. That's what I did. ~ Melissa Febos

Times have changed since a certain author was executed for murdering his publisher. They say that when the author was on the scaffold he said good-bye to the minister and to the reporters, and then he saw some publishers sitting in the front row below, and to them he did not say good-bye. He said instead, "I'll see you again." ~ James M. Barrie

If you've written a powerful book about a woman and your publisher then puts a 'feminine' image on the cover, it 'types' the book. ~ Meg Wolitzer

Think of it more as publishing instead of marketing.Be authentic as a publisher and create content that helps you connect to everyone else ... because they're already connected. ~ Mitch Joel

I had some connections from the newspapers that I did work with up there, so there was a newspaper publisher in Hollywood, and they promised me work and so on. ~ Marc Davis

No, my publisher has always done the marketing. ~ Jean M. Auel

As a publisher, you should decide what content is free and what you'd pay for. You have to get the packaging right, but people will pay for content. ~ Mike McCue

'Sanctus' was done on speculation. I had no agent or publisher. I was being sensible, I suppose, by writing a standalone novel. I figured if that one didn't work, no one would be interested in reading a sequel. ~ Simon Toyne

Were mildly favorable. People actually showed up at the readings my publisher arranged. The sales were underwhelming. And, after a few months, I went on with the business of my life, certain that my career as an author would be short-lived, but glad to have survived the process with my dignity more or less intact. I had little time for reflection over ~ Barack Obama

I think that the continuity of what I do as an editor with what I did when I started out 40 years ago is very direct. The delivery system is changing and will continue to, but the actual interaction between publisher and author is exactly the same. ~ Jonathan Galassi

Self-publishing in comics is core to the whole artform. There is no scarlet letter in comics as there still is, to some degree, in prose. As no publisher for a long time would publish serious work in comics, the only way a lot of it came out was because of self-publishing. Many of the greatest works of the medium are self-published. ~ Kieron Gillen

Never submit an idea or chapter to an editor or publisher, no matter how much he would like you to. Writing from the approved idea is (another) gravely serious time-waster. This is your story. Try and find out what your editor wants in advance, but then try and give it to him in one piece. ~ John Creasey

After 'Lindbergh,' my publisher asked whom I wanted to write about next. I said, 'There's one idea I've been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It's Woodrow Wilson.' ~ A. Scott Berg

The one affectation I have forced on the publisher ... are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter. ~ Andy Rooney

The Internet will make every enterprise a publisher. ~ Steve Case

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

So I became a publisher by mistake - well, not quite by mistake, because I wanted to be an editor but I had to make sure the magazine would survive. The point is this: Most businesses fail, so if you're going to succeed, it has to be about more than making money. ~ Richard Branson

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

No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did. ~ David Halberstam

Next to the defeated politician, the writer is the most vocal and inventive griper on earth. He sees hardship and unfairness wherever he looks. His agent doesn't love him (enough). The blank sheet of paper is an enemy. The publisher is a cheapskate. The critic is a philistine. The public doesn't understand him. His wife doesn't understand him. The bartender doesn't understand him. ~ Peter Mayle

Before it occurred to me that I might actually need an agent, I had generated well over three million dollars' worth of income, a good deal of it for the publisher. ~ Stephen King

I got into an argument with my original publisher. They wanted me to do 'Kitty' and nothing else. I wanted to do lots of things, not just 'Kitty' books. ~ Carrie Vaughn

I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on - getting to the artist, getting to the publishers - you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that. ~ Otis Blackwell

Today, however, every company has become a de facto publisher, creating content that's valued by those they want to reach. ~ Ann Handley

To aspiring writers, I would tell them that we live in a wonderful time where you're able to make your work visible, easily. If you think about it, even ten years ago or twenty years ago, there was a middle man, there was a publisher, there were studios, there was this world of rejection letters. Now, we're in a place where we have the technology and the ability to go shoot our own movies or to put stuff on YouTube or a blog, if you're a writer, or self-publish. ~ Diablo Cody

Publishers always clamour for the books that no one has ever written, and turn a cold shoulder on them as soon as they're written. If St Paul were living now they would pester him to write an Epistle to the Esquimaux, but no London publisher would dream of reading his Epistle to the Ephesians. ~ Saki

As the publisher of FSG and the custodian of its legacy, I have an interested insider's view. ~ Jonathan Galassi

I am thrilled to be a member of the Kobalt family. I've never felt so taken care of on every level. As a songwriter, publisher and friend ... there is no better home than Kobalt! ~ Desmond Child

I had brought up from Chile a contract agent whose cover was that of a newspaper publisher in Santiago, a young, very talented man, named Dave Phillips, who later on carved quite a career for himself in the agency. ~ E. Howard Hunt

The Internet destroyed most of the barriers to publication. The cost of being a publisher dropped to almost zero with two interesting immediate results: anybody can publish, and more importantly, you can publish whatever you want. ~ Dick Costolo

When the publisher here in America wanted to put the word "memoir" on the title page [of 'Winter Journal'] and on the cover, I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no." No genre whatsoever. It's an independent work not really connected to those things at all. ~ Paul Auster

I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves they got up this entire little flutter to enable them to unload a book that was taking too much room in their cellars, but you can never tell what a publisher will do. I have been one myself. ~ Mark Twain

I have one very bad experience with a U.K. publisher, who gave it out to be understood that she wanted to publish my book and made me do a lot of changes, all outside a contract, only to reject it in the end. ~ Neel Mukherjee

Gone are the days when a publisher could take out an ad, count on a few reviews, and have an author do a couple of signings. Nowadays, readers want to feel a connection with an author. ~ John Searles

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Brands need to take the phrase 'acting like a publisher literally. ~ Dietrich Mateschitz

When asked by her publisher why her work had not been submitted while on her honeymoon: I've been too fucking busy or vice versa ~ Dorothy Parker

You know what a publisher is? He's a failed writer whose father was rich enough that he's able to appropriate other people's talents. ~ Joel Dicker

A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. ~ Oscar Wilde

I think it's important for the public to know, great reporting starts with a publisher who has guts and an editor who has guts. ~ Dan Rather

I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not. ~ Jonathan Coe

The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within a year or so be a rich and famous writer. Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume! ~ Bentley Little

Some people try to paint in my style. Some simply sell pirated copies of my work. Some claim to be my publisher or agent or even my exclusive representative, when they are not. ~ LeRoy Neiman

I don't get on with novelists, don't enjoy their company. Once you've worked for a publisher, you understand the species, see them in their natural habitat, and it's not always pretty. ~ Neil Cross

"Eight Days of Luke" was refused by another confused publisher on the grounds that children shouldn't strike matches. When my agent pointed out that David in the book was twelve years old, the publisher said that he was striking matches to summon the devil, then, and this couldn't be allowed. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative. ~ Robert Scheer

The writer - more especially the novelist - who has not, at one moment or another, considered his publisher unworthy of him, has still to be conceived. ~ Storm Jameson

You come out of your MFA program with a cogent clutch of stories, trying to get an agent interested, and she or he admits these are quality, sure, but this agent actually needs something the publisher can make money on. So you get kind of bullied by the market into writing a novel. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health
congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher. ~ Calvin Trillin

I believe we must document our past; this tells us who we are and from where we came."
---Author Pamela Clark, from her interview with her publisher. ~ Pamela A. Clark

We had a lengthy discussion of the difficulties I had had working on other biographies and the efforts made by Martha Gellhorn, Susan Sontag and others to prevent publication. Gellhorn's representative, Bill Buford, sent a threatening letter to my publisher. Michael, a journalist first, called Buford a "dirty dog." I never dreamed, then, that he, too, would, in the end, assume a rather high-handed attitude towards my manuscript, ordering me to make changes and deferring to the feelings of others. On this day, I said: "I don't respond well to those threats. I don't allow them to intimidate me." "We don't believe in authorised biographies," Michael concluded. "All authorised biographies are hereby condemned." I would remember these words later when Michael the Apostate appeared. ~ Carl Rollyson

I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch. ~ Jackie Collins

Think like a publisher, not a marketer. ~ David Meerman Scott

I've never signed a contract, so never have a deadline. A deadline's an unnerving thing. I just finish a book, and if the publisher doesn't like it, that's his privilege. ~ Marchette Chute

Naturally, some of the reviews were negative. In speeches, Bezos later recalled getting an angry letter from an executive at a book publisher implying that Bezos didn't understand that his business was to sell books, not trash them. "We saw it very differently," Bezos said. "When I read that letter, I thought, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions."5 ~ Brad Stone

Anybody who has anything abusive to say of women, whether ancient or modern, can command a vast public in the popular press and a ready agreement from the average publisher. ~ Dora Russell

No matter what, I'm never going to get an anthology from an actual publisher, though I could always score another music anthology. But if this is going to be a document of a multiplicity of my writings, it'll do. It feels like a birthday party or something. ~ Richard Meltzer