Sonny Mehta Quotes

Actually, I love trying to figure out why certain books become hits while others, which may be just as good, have trouble finding an audience.

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.

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.

The marketability, the success of a book, ultimately rests with whether or not people will find the concept/characters/title/cover appealing.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

If no one knows your book is out there, no one will think about buying it. It's as simple as that.

I think 'The Time Traveler's Wife' is one of the most brilliantly marketed books I have ever seen.

No one knows why books do well.

People think writing is a very distinguished, cerebral thing, where all you do is write. It doesn't work that way. People have to see online promotions, see piles of your book in stores, and you have to make sure the guy recommends it!

With a hardcover, you get two chances, a year apart, for the book to make an impact - often with a new cover featuring artfully crafted snippets of reviews, a new marketing campaign and maybe even a new publisher.

My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

I think it's a fallacy to say that a good book sells itself. It doesn't happen. I'm a voracious reader and I can give you a long list of books which should have been best sellers but they aren't. How can you buy a book if you haven't heard of it?

I do send out information about my books. Very few people buy the books that way, but I always feel that if they want to know more about the process, they can get the information from my books.

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.

I myself don't know what makes my books work. I enter a bookstore and I'm frankly overwhelmed by the number of books in most of them, and I know people are buying mine.

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.

When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.

No one really knows the value of book tours. Whether or not they're good ideas, or if they improve book sales. I happen to think the author is the last person you'd want to talk to about a book. They hate it by that point; they've already moved on to a new lover. Besides, the author never knows what the book is about anyway.

I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author.

There was a sense that there was a lot of word of mouth happening with 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter,' even in hardcover.

Publicity doesn't work for books. It really doesn't. All it does is get your name in front of a reader who might then glance at your book. Or not.

To move up to hardcover is a way of getting more attention for my books. It means a lot to me: It means my books are legitimate.

The simple fact is, the more people who buy your books, the more are likely to read you. That's what I'd like to see happen.

My experience is that books take on a life of their own and create their own energy. I've represented books that have been sold for very little money and gone on to great glory, and I've seen books sold for an enormous amount of money published to very little response.

Buying new books supports the writer by providing both a royalty and an audience; a writer whose book sells well has a better chance of selling another.