Peter Sotos Quotes

You want to publish with a publisher because a publisher knows how to publish a book. And you don't. You really don't.

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

To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution.

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's hard selling books in general: companies are merging, editors being laid off, bricks-and-mortar bookstores closing, large chain bookstores squeezing out independents, and online retailers squeezing out chain bookstores.

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.

According to my royalty statements, 'The Green Progression' sold 392 copies in hardcover.

In 2008, when I wrote Book 1 and Book 2, the head of the publishing house suggested twelve books - one each month. For practical reasons, that didn't work out.

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.

Publishing a book is a very different thing than writing one.

It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it has of eventually catching someone's attention.

No, my publisher has always done the marketing.

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.

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.

I think publishing's strength is also its weakness. It's got such a rich and celebrated history as an industry. For the most part, publishing people are incredibly creative, business is done based on the strength of relationships, and the product being peddled is books.

As for indie writers, a lot of them don't realize that they're in the hurry-up-and-wait business, not the wait-and-hurry-up business. They work really, really, really hard at goosing the first-month sales, and then getting disappointed when those sales either go down or never happen in the first place.

I knew people were independently publishing, and I buy books on Amazon. I began seriously considering it when Amanda Hocking was in the news about her self-publishing success.

I think the more avenues that open up when people want to publish, the better. Some of the authors that want to jump ship from the traditional houses and go on their own, you know what? Good luck. It's going to be a lot tougher than you think.

When I was first writing 'Feed' - which was the first book I published as Mira - I talked about it very openly on my blog, on Twitter, that I was writing this book, and it wasn't until after it was sold that I said 'Mira Grant' wrote this book. And the reason there was really purely marketing-based.

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

I've got a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who's been working little miracles for me, but it's true the budgets aren't what they once were in terms of advertisement and book tours.

One question that often comes up is why, in this age of blogs and tweets and instant digital communication of all kinds, it still takes so long to publish a book.

A book's title is vital.

I came into book publishing without any particular impulse to be in book publishing.