Top 122 Publisher Quotes

I’m Marie Lightfoot, or at least that’s the name my publisher puts on the covers of the books I write about true crime. In classic ‘true crime’ fashion, my latest one is titled ‘Anything to Be Together.’

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn’t, maybe you need a different publisher.

It’s very hard to get one publisher to accept an author going over to the other author’s company to collaborate.

When you’re making a print book in 2012, I actually think the onus is on you – and on your publisher – to make something that’s worth buying in its physical edition.

I wrote my first full book when I was fourteen, and that was ‘Obernewtyn.’ It was also the first book I had published. It was accepted by the first publisher I sent it to, and it was short listed for Children’s Book of the Year in the older readers category in Australia.

The normal reaction of a publisher when faced with an author with a bee in his bonnet is to grab the check and run.

I’ve been told not to tour down in Mexico. I am too well-known now. The kidnappers may think that my publisher will pay a ransom.

There used to be rather serious firewalls between the artist and the buying public – the gallery, the publisher. And technology demolishes that wall and basically says, ‘Self-promote or die.’ And that is a bad head for any sort of artist to be forced into.

I labored for eight years thinking I was writing a book for adults that was a nostalgic look back on childhood. Then my publisher informed me I’d written a children’s book.

The marketing of XP is very deliberate and conscious. Part of it is in co-opting the power of the media; I make sure I’m newsworthy from time to time. Part is in co-opting some of my publisher’s ad budget.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it’s true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher.

My grandfather, my dad’s dad, he was a lawyer. He was a state legislator. He was the publisher of Oregon’s second largest newspaper. He was a pretty amazing guy.

I certainly hope to be a great publisher, and if people want to love me, too, that’s even better.

My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels.

Of all the things that the digital revolution has produced, once of the coolest, simplest ones is you can now contact people who write books that you read. You used to have to write a letter to the publisher and hope they passed it along, which they never did.

Facebook has become the richest and most powerful publisher in history by replacing editors with algorithms – shattering the public square into millions of personalised news feeds, shifting entire societies away from the open terrain of genuine debate and argument while they make billions from our valued attention.

It is a good idea to know which publishers publish which stories. For example, there is no sense in sending a picture book text to a publisher who does not publish picture books.

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream – I was surprised to find it happening.

Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey have been successful in their self-publishing ventures. But notice that Hocking would prefer to write and hand over the editing, promotion, and selling to a traditional publisher.

I wrote a novel for my degree, and I’m very happy I didn’t submit that to a publisher. I sympathize with my professors who had to read it.

When you’re external to a publisher, most independent developers live on paranoia. The mainstay of every day is paranoia – every indie company believes their publisher in some way has these Machiavellian plans that will cause disaster for the game and the studio.

I signed with Big Yellow Dog and have been with them for years. The president of the company is a woman named Carla Wallace, who is an amazing publisher who just has a knack for female artists.

Authors change publishers because it’s like being married for a long time and suddenly you want to go out and have a wild affair! No, not seriously, sometimes the deal is more interesting with a new publisher, and other times they have more enthusiasm for your books.

I remember a period where my publisher said to me, ‘Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.’

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.

It is important to send your work to as many publishers as possible. For every one publisher who may show interest in your work, there will be at least five who will reject you.

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.

This whole phenomenon of the diversion of organizations from their purposes and ideals does not seem very serious when the scum rise to the top in the bridge club or the offices of a small magazine publisher.

To think that we as a publisher (i.e. people who have never actually MADE a game) can have a realistic impact on a project that a team of experts is slaving away on full time for 2 years is a bit arrogant.

A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.

I left for New York expecting to repeat my success, only to be turned down by almost every publisher in that city, till the Viking Press, my American publishers of a lifetime, thought of taking me on.

It’s always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher – readers! – who are going to appreciate them.

I argued strongly to the American publisher that ‘Reality Hunger’ should come out first. They thought that ‘The Thing About Life’ would have more appeal because it’s on a broader topic; it’s about mortality rather than art.

Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn’t want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.

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.

I do what I love and what I always dreamed of doing for a living. I write love stories, and I have always had a publisher willing to publish them. I have a sizable and loyal audience. I have made best-seller lists and won awards. What more could anyone ask for?

I have to tell you, I’m a happy man. I’ve lived the life I wanted to live. I’ve written the books I wanted to write. No publisher has ever even suggested that I change so much as a phrase – commas and periods, yes – and I suspect that I have a lot of serious readers; in fact, I know.

One of the nice things about publishing with Amazon is that the window for marketing is much longer than with a traditional publisher because these titles are not coming off of shelves.

At O’Reilly, the way we think about our business is that we’re not a publisher; we’re not a conference producer; we’re a company that helps change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

We actually determine whether the book is read and make payments to the publisher based on that.

I got Elliott Smith’s photography book as a gift before. The publisher of that book’s logo were glasses, and those glasses came to my mind when I was thinking of having a tattoo.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It’s called ‘My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.’ A publisher came to me and said, ‘Write a book,’ so I did. I wanted to call it ‘Everybody Else Has Got a Book.’

A publisher should always be on the receiving end. He should take an interest in almost any subject and remain anonymous, letting the author take center stage.

It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic.

Most people do not pay attention to the publisher’s imprint on a given book.

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.

The old fun thing is when somebody typed up the first chapter of War and Peace. And then made a precis of the rest of it and sent it out and only one publisher recognized it.

Print-on-demand and electronic self-publishing options have made it easy for anyone to set up a business as a publisher whether they know what they’re doing or not.

I began writing ‘Matterhorn’ in 1975 and for more than 30 years I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript.