Top 70 M. J. Rose Quotes

I placed my new novel, ‘The Book of Lost Fragrances’, in Paris, knowing it would be a challenge. But the book belonged in the city that is one of the greatest perfume capitals of the world and has been since for more than three centuries.

There are many traditionally published authors who have hated the cover their publisher’s decided on. Or the title or the marketing or the advertising. But there was nothing they could do about it.

If I present a boring personal life to my readers, it’s going to be harder for them to think of my novels as thrilling.

I think the most important thing we as writers can do is figure out how we define what success will mean to us and focus on that.

Ask your agent to set up a meeting with either your editor or the marketing department of the house or both so you can find out what they’re doing, what they aren’t, and what you can do to help.

Don’t send out a newsletter just to send out a newsletter. One newsletter a year that is really interesting is more beneficial than 12 that are boring. If you write two or three boring newsletters in a row, your readers will start to think you write boring books.

If your mom is still around, you’re so lucky.

Buy other authors’ books when you go to their events. Even if you aren’t going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren’t interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It’s karma and just plain good manners.

I grew up in New York and have lived here all my life. I think it’s the best city in the world and can write about it with gusto and fervor and passion.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking our careers will come to a standstill, or worse, crash and burn if we aren’t social media butterflies.

An author’s ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table – along with a great manuscript – makes a difference in what books get picked up. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction titles. You need to show your publisher what you’ve got in your marketing arsenal.

I began tailoring my books to cater to one or another universe of readers. I found it incredibly boring; and frankly, it felt stultifying. I’d previously been in advertising. I felt if I was going to create something to fit a specific market, I might as well have stayed with advertising.

When I sit down to write, I know everything I need to know… I start writing, and within 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I’m watching a movie. I’m not making this stuff up; the characters are acting it out,and I’m just writing it down.

It’s been more than a decade since I put that self-published novel, ‘Lip Service’, up on a website. Since then, many hundreds of authors have gone from self-published to traditionally published.

I think that we need to live our lives for the present… as if it is our one and only wild and wonderful life.

I always miss my mom. Mother’s Day would be just one more day I’d feel her absence but for the relentless commercialization. Thanks to that, this day is even harder to deal with.

Jacqueline Rose was so wonderful in so many ways, and I was really blessed to be her daughter. Of all the things I am because of her – there’s no question: I am a writer because of her love of books.

There’s almost no author alive who isn’t weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.

The biggest mistake is to assume that another writer’s successful strategy will work for you, too. Publishers’ marketers – and even freelance publicists who cost mega bucks – tend to do the same basic things for all books.

From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising.

The one thing I am now sure of is that if there is such a thing as destiny, it is a result of our passion, be that for money, power, or love. Passion, for better or worse.

Thriller novelists get asked – berated, sometimes – about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.

I was an avid reader, but never thought seriously about writing a novel until I was in my thirties. I took no formal fiction-writing courses and never thought about these categories when I wrote my first novel.

Vera Caspary wrote thrillers – but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specialty was a specific type that she pioneered – the psycho thriller.

As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don’t be a whiner or a copycat.

The Fiction Writer’s Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list.

Your agent should be invested in the success of your book past the contract stage. After all, if it sells well, she’s going to be getting 15 percent of every dime you make. She can be your best advocate in fighting for your book – not just with editing and the cover, but with marketing and sales as well.

There was an ingredient used in perfumes and remedies in the Middle Ages called ‘momie’ that is certainly one of the most fascinating I’ve come across.

From 1999 on – until 2003 – I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications – altogether writing over 150 articles.

A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess.

Don’t spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books.

In ‘Power Play’, Finder uses the thriller structure to make pointed observations about gender in the workplace, the corporate caste system, and the true nature of risk in the global business environment.

Recognize that the great majority of us aren’t trained actors and entertainers. Usually, it’s not our faces, our bodies, our personas or our stage presence that sells our books. It’s our stories, our visions and our voices.

Don’t add people to your subscriber list just because they once wrote you a note. Or once answered a note you wrote to them. Don’t put your address book into your newsletter database. Let your readers sign up.

Sales don’t always have anything to do with good or brilliant or original. Sales are about appeal.

I’ve had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.

All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it.

You shouldn’t talk about yourself all the time – most of us aren’t for sale. Our books are. Talk about them. It’s not a question of whether or not you’re fascinating on a personal level – it’s that your trivia and trials might not have any connection to the tone, tenor and sense of your books.

Save yourself some grief. Check with the publicist you hire to see what other books he/she has coming out at the same time as yours.

Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Or Pinterest. Nothing wrong with having a social presence.

One Tweet can be heard ’round the world if the right people retweet it and the right people notice it on their feeds.

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of reincarnation. I learned that many brilliant people were interested in reincarnation, including Carl Jung. I’m a big Jungian. So I began writing novels involving theories integrating past and present, even if the past element in the novel took place 500 or 1,000 years ago.

I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She’s a city for the all senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and, yes, for mysteries.

In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.

Back in 1999 and 2000, a few of us… a very few of us… Douglas Clegg, Seth Godin and I… offered free electronic copies of our books in an effort to reach an audience we otherwise wouldn’t have reached and to test out a new marketing concept for books. Despite the industry screaming we were crazy, it worked.

As consumers, we are faced with hundreds of choices – and when it comes to books, thousands of choices.

Books on their own aren’t insanely expensive compared to other things; three large cappuccinos cost more than a paperback, and two and a half gallons of gas cost more than a paperback.

I grew up in New York, and for the first ten years of my life, we lived across from the Metropolitan Museum. When I was an adult, I moved back to that neighborhood and lived there again.

There is no debate that social media is a great tool for networking with others in our industry. It can lead to friendships, support, and serendipitous connections with reviewers, agents, reporters, or editors.

I’ve always been fascinated by how the past impacts the present. For the first half of my career as a novelist, I wrote psychological suspense mysteries. I wanted to be a therapist but was told that while I was a fine diagnostician, I would be a terrible therapist because I wanted to solve everyone’s problems.

We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine.