It’s possible there are no two books in publishing history more dissimilar than ‘Human Traces’ and ‘Devil May Care.’ And that was really the attraction of it.
We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.
I think I’ve read all of W.E.B. Du Bois, which is a lot. He started off with comprehensive field work in Philadelphia, publishing a book in 1899 called ‘The Philadelphia Negro’. It was this wonderful combination of clear statistical data and ethnographic data.
Publishing is a business. It’s about squeezing every last dollar out of every available source, and the most vulnerable source is the author. No clearer proof of that exists than the ‘standard’ book contract.
Co-creation is much more work than writing somewhere in a hidden corner and then publishing your content. However, the benefits outweigh the costs.
I was 17 when I wrote a collection of short stories and wanted it published but it didn’t happen. A lot of publishing houses don’t allow young authors to enter into writing segments.
I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.
Reading galleys on the subway is the closest the publishing industry comes to having a standardized mating call.
Soon after publishing a book for kids, my mailbox began to fill with letters from children all across America. Not because my novels for young readers are bestsellers – they’re not by a long shot – but because today’s kids love to write to authors.
Because publishing is becoming more business-oriented each day with more examination of the bottom line, it’s harder to break out than ever.
Race and gender quotas, whether in publishing, the media, or scientific research labs, are becoming more extreme and more ineluctable.
Since signing up to Think Act Report, the majority of members are taking more action and publishing more information on gender equality.
I’d been sending out demos and CDs for years. I knew my stuff was good enough, but I was getting nowhere. Then, three people – my future manager and two publishers – happened to send one of my tracks to EMI publishing in the same week. All of a sudden, they were interested!
My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn’t budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn’t been pretty damn cool.
Nobody sells books like J.K. Rowling. We have a rule in publishing: Never compare anything to ‘Harry Potter’ because it’s like lightning in a bottle.
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
‘The New Jedi Order’ was a pure publishing project: a single massive story – virtually one huge novel spread across multiple volumes – told by a succession of authors.
There are plenty of secondary characters that I had always hoped to write, but I don’t know if it will ever happen. The way contracts work, if you leave one publishing house for another, the characters tend to stay with the previous publishing house.
WikiLeaks, for me, has not only that element in it of journalism publishing, but also the way in which it does it, with its – the concept we have of scientific journalism, I find very important and really appeals to me, that all of the source documents should be there.
What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time.
I don’t think anyone’s career is so big that they can’t know where their major synchs are or where their publishing is going.
The nice thing about publishing later in life is that you already know who you are. You don’t have to hang out with the ‘Paris Review’ crowd to try to make yourself feel like a legitimate writer.
I realized very young that I loved reading and wanted to do something related to books/reading for a living. I didn’t think of publishing, really, until I was out of college.
I’m really good at making software for publishing.
I got several litmus tests for songs, but usually the people at the publishing company… they’re straight-shooters.
Publishing can be a cliquish and incestuous business; it is not uncommon for writers from the same agencies and publishers to review each other.
I hadn’t meant to do the pattern of publishing short stories and then a novel. I thought, ‘I’m a novelist. I know it.’ But you have to kind of write a lot of bad novels before you can write a good one, I think, so I did that. But meanwhile, I loved the short stories I did.
I didn’t need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I’d have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do.
There’s a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.
Most of my money is more brand association deals. I own my publishing so that’s allowed me to leverage my brand in ways that most people cannot or will not because they won’t make any money doing it.
I’ve always wanted to push someone who’s not really known but has mad talent. I don’t know if I’m going to do a publishing company or a record label, but I’m interested in pushing artists in any sense.
I think one of the most exciting things about the whole digital side of publishing is that it eventually allows you to operate at any length. That also means shorter stuff, too.
I think having kids has been the biggest influence on my work since I started publishing.
Just as the web democratized publishing and development, Bitcoin can democratize building new financial services. Contracts can be entered into, verified, and enforced completely electronically, using any third-party that you care to trust, or by the code itself.
I think my very best work came out when I was about 60, not when I was 20. I was publishing all the time when I was in my 20s, and some of those poems I still like. And there were a few after 60, and in my 70s, that I like. But they became fewer and fewer.
My road to publishing actually came through a colleague who connected me to my agent, and the faculty at Cornell was very supportive.
I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.
The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.
I enjoy writing. Publishing… not so much. I’ve been lucky to work with some very talented people in the publishing world, and the print industry has allowed me to write full time.
I am not at all justifying Kapil’s abusive behavior. I am only trying to say that when you know the person is depressed, you are still publishing negative stories about him and trying to break him. Why are you instigating him when you know his mental state? It looks as though people have an agenda.
Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.
In the publishing sense, ‘urban fantasy’ does not mean ‘black,’ and that’s pretty ironic, considering that it’s a euphemism everywhere else. It would be great to get that back.
The majority of the wealth of human knowledge is owned by a few publishing companies that hoard information and make billions off licensing fees, although most scholarly articles and journals are paid for by taxpayers through government grants.
Publishing is, by its nature, about deadlines, and deadlines are toxic.
I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January ’91.
The publishing industry is an archaic and inefficient industry.
Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they’re salacious and funny and self-reflective.
In my view, the ebook world for both established and new authors is a terrific new and exciting format. It is a format that will bring forth many new writers to publishing.
I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.
I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn’t room for what I wanted to write.
I’ve never liked the publishing world’s determination to pigeonhole every writer into a genre.
‘Band Played On’ is a good one. Barbara Orbison, who was Roy’s wife, was involved in publishing in Nashville because she oversaw Roy’s publishing, and she had a company in Nashville. She had a whole bunch of writers assembled, and they got together every day and wrote, and they write for everybody in Nashville.
I loved publishing; I loved working in the book industry, but I’ve been writing pretty much nonstop since I was 19. I realized very early on that I would need a day job, and I wanted one that was in books.
