230 Quotes About Publishing

You have to consistently work at building your audience or platform.

Do not set out to write the next Angela's Ashes, Liars' Club, or Perfect Storm; a third of the projects publishers see these days make such claims.

[W]ithin me, the longing is always new and vivid to express my life in an enduring form, in a figure that would be worthy of joining the most excellent, greeting them and being in community with them. Yes, I have always lusted after this community[.]

After writing and before publishing a book, the writer should read it as a reader since such insight mirrors the flaws.Ehsan Sehgal

But in my experience, a writer gravitates toward a certain form or genre because, like a well-made jacket, it suits him.

There is nothing more refreshing for an editor than to meet a writer or read a query that takes him completely by surprise

There comes a time when you have to let go of the New Yorker fantasy in service of justing getting on with it [writing].

Beware of all writers who substitute initials for their give names -

When Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, his first novel to appear in ten years, plopped its massive self down in the number-one spot on the bestseller list, it seemed as if every major author over sixty lined up, like boys at a dunking booth, to knock him down. Normal Mailer, John Updike, and Harold Bloom felt it incumbent on them [sic] to take a shot at Wolfe in our most influential papers, claiming his work mere entertainment.