230 Quotes About Publishing

So many authors, so little time to disqualify them!

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Rejection is no badge of honour.

En una ocasión le pregunté a Alfonso Reyes por qué publicamos, y Reyes me contestó: «Publicamos para no tener que pasarnos la vida corrigiendo borradores».

Apparently, my hopes, dreams and aspirations were no match against my poor spelling, punctuation and grammar.

There are three certainties in a writer's life: death, taxes, and rejection letters.

Between my first book tour, in 2003, and the next one, in 2009, many of the places I visited had undergone a significant transformation or vanished: Cody’s in Berkeley, seven branch libraries in Philadelphia, twelve of the fourteen bookstores in Harvard Square, Harry W. Schwartz in Milwaukee and, in my own hometown of Washington, D.C., Olsson’s and Chapters.

Write like a fighter. Assert words, control the space, release the book.

I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will.