Alan Dean Foster Quotes

It's not like publishing is perfect. Far from it. The industry is struggling to adapt and survive, and it's incredibly frustrating trying to break in.

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.

The big bestsellers aren't being created by Barnes & Noble.

The point is that if a book that had been published three years ago started to sell twice as many all of a sudden it probably wouldn't even get no­ticed. People wouldn't be tracking it. The system has cleaned up its act an awful lot but the best-seller list system is not an entirely foolproof thing.

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

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.

At a time when there's younger writers starting up and it's inevitable that you're becoming less fashionable, at a time when the industrial pressures apply more and more to books, how do you keep a book you wrote 28 years ago selling well year on year? Because it really is getting harder.

It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.

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.

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.'

No one knows why books do well.

So much has changed in our business. E-books, that's been one of the principal developments. There has been also the failure of Borders and the rise of Amazon, just to name two others.

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.

I know a bit about selling books, and you need a good title - a catchy concoction with a little Cajun spice, something that will make folks stop in the aisles, turn away from the Grisham novels and the latest crazy diet fad, and pick up your masterpiece.

As an author, I love to know my book sells really well.

I'm not sure if you can strive your way into a career as a novelist. You have to write books; there are no short cuts.

There are always interesting, innovative, dynamic stories being written and being published. They're not always being prominently published, but they're being published.

I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works.

I think I've changed my business strategy every year since 2003. You have to be watching the horizon constantly. The rug has been pulled out from under our feet so many times.

There's so much published by so many different publishers. Most of the time, I don't have to confront that, but walking into a conference center filled with books - and people buying them or not buying them, being interested or not interested in them - that's just overwhelming to me now.