My books have been translated into various languages and sold in other countries, but I never have any contact with the foreign publishers and am so disconnected from that process that it seems almost imaginary. With ‘How to Save a Life’, I worked closely with Usborne editors and have been involved in the publicity.
Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers’ high hardback margins essentially disappear.
I always had good recognition from the Southern writers, but the publishers never took any notice of that.
Once upon a time, gatekeepers were newspaper publishers and magazine editors and people who ran radio stations and news networks. And they decided what went above the fold and what went on page A10.
In the beginning, if you look at those early label albums of the Chicks, we didn’t write all that much. We had an A&R person and they were getting songs from publishers, listening to hours and hours of cassette tapes.
When I first started editing a ‘Year’s Best’ volume in the ’70s, the job was pretty straightforward – there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.
My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.
There were a lot of publishers that I loved, so the book went to auction. An auction is where you sit nervously by your phone and eat potato chips for two days waiting for your agent to text you numbers of the highest bid for each round. I ultimately went with Dervla Kelly at Rodale Books.
As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.
Self-publishing has been a dubious challenge to traditional publishers, at best.
Now that I’m being very successful, publishers are trying to mainstream me, but I’m unabashedly genre. It’s what I like to read, what I like to write.
I think it is serious to have good sales. As I learned belatedly, the more you sell, the more publishers pay attention to you, and it took me a very long time to figure that out because I never thought that way.
I think most new writers are better off going with traditional publishers who will actually, at a minimum, edit your work, package it well, and market it for you.
Are companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter open technology platforms or publishers with curated content? For years, Big Tech giants have tried to have it both ways, exploiting special legal protections to enrich themselves while behaving like publishers without the liabilities.
There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.
I’m delighted about the track’s success in the sports world, but the frustrating thing is, I don’t think I got rich on it. The labels and publishers did very cheap deals on our songs.
Textbook publishers don’t even bother to advertise at their conventions.
When I started in the business, there was a thing called adult fantasy, but nobody quite knew what it was, and most publishers didn’t have an adult fantasy list. They had science fiction lists, which they stuck a little bit of fantasy into.
Publishers have published women’s fiction into a corner, and now we are all trying to punch our way out of it. We just have to write the best books we possibly can and hope that, once the pink covers and Bridget Jones have faded from memory, we might finally be allowed just to be called writers.
I’m really interested in independent publishers and memes and mini comics. But even before that, I was interested in Japanese manga and anime.
My agent and I put out my proposal one Thursday afternoon in August, 1998. Publishers started bidding immediately, and that process progressed for a few days.
I think instead writers and publishers and readers need to go to the places where people are, and make the argument that there is great value to the quiet, contemplative process of reading a novel, that reading great books carefully offers pleasures and consolations that no iPad app ever can.
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.
Publishers should use the paperback side to leverage the ebook side.
I don’t chase publishers. Publishers chase me.
I had a wonderful and very successful career in New York and had the privilege of working with some of the best editors and publishers in the business.
I believe I’m a better writer now than I was when I started. I’m grateful that I had good guidance because you don’t make it in this business without good editors and a lot of support from your publishers.
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
The digital revolution has wrest a little control away from corporate publishers and white, male, middle-aged critics, but the financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.
As a writer, you can’t allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.
Like most new writers, I could only hope that one day one publisher might agree to publish one of my books; I couldn’t imagine several publishers all wanting to buy the first book I’d written.
You can get a subjective and highly factual dossier on most anyone in the public realm almost instantly. It’s why publishers don’t worry about author photos any more; people just Google a person and get on with things.
I’ve been asked to write a book several times; I’ve had several publishers come to me and offer me book deals. Especially right after I left Dream Theater and Avenged Sevenfold, there was a lot of drama going on in my life, so the book companies came at me thirsty for blood and gossip. And I turned down all the deals.
Publishers, editors, agents all have one thing in common, aside from their love of cocktail parties. It’s an incredible taste and an ability to find and nurture authors.
Comics publishers are used to looking in a very, very narrow focused prism. It’s like when I started writing ‘X-Men.’ Our ‘meat and potatoes’ money was made of newsstand sales, while anything that came through the Direct Market was considered gravy.
My first novel was turned down by about twenty publishers over a period of two and a half years. Because my name is Irish and would not be familiar to English editors, one of them said: ‘If she writes anything else, do let us know.’ Slowly, very slowly, the books began to sell and be noticed.
Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread.
Roku collects money two ways: by selling hardware, which it calls ‘players’; and by selling advertising and taking a cut of revenues from the video publishers on its platform.
I was always interested in art at school, and after year twelve, senior year, I spent three years studying graphic design at college. I worked in advertising for two years but didn’t like it much, then began doing a bit of illustration work for various publishers.
I am a book reviewer. I write for a glossy magazine called ‘SCI FI.’ The money is not life-changing, but it’s a low-stress gig. Publishers send me their books. More than I could possibly read. I pick a few and write about them, put a very few others on the shelf, to be perused at my leisure, someday.
Any anxieties publishers have about putting a child on the front cover of a book who isn’t white is very old fashioned.
In September 2005, I was three things: the media blogger for ‘FishbowlNY,’ a maniacal Daily Show fan, and the only person to smuggle a tape recorder and camera into a big Magazine Publishers of America event featuring Jon Stewart interviewing five hotshot magazine editors in an unbelievable bloodbath.
Publishers give you deadlines for those last phases of production that are perfectly comfortable for them. So, to whatever extent I can, I like to push those to give me a little more time, and make it so that they’re as uncomfortable as I am.
By the mid-noughties, I found that I was no longer the only openly gay person in every setting. At one point, a couple of Moscow magazine publishers even got the idea that they should actively headhunt gay and lesbian staff.
You know, it’s sort of common wisdom among New York publishers that short story collections don’t make money.
Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers.
Higher ebook prices only benefit one group: publishers.
I’m like an actor who obnoxiously says he doesn’t watch his own TV show. It is extremely rare for me to read my own comics and have asked publishers to please stop sending them to me.
Prior to 2009, when publishers scoffed at the ebook market, they offered writers contracts which gave us half of the money they made off ebook sales.
I have a problem with censorship by the lawyer – by legal people by the publishing firm, and I may be changing publishers. They don’t seem to want to take too many risks with living people.
When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript.
