M. J. Rose Quotes

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 hire anyone - no matter what they offer - who promises you they'll sell 'X' copies of your book. Every book is different. The best any marketing company or PR firm can do for your book is make potential readers aware of it.

A bad book and good marketing won't work, the same way a good book and bad marketing will also not work. There is no choice in the matter that if you need to write a good book, you also need to have good marketing for it.

PR and marketing doesn't sell books. It gets attention for them. It sends readers to bookstores and websites to read a few pages.

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.

Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is an arduous and nerve-wracking process.

The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.

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 lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.

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!

If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it.

Thousands of books are published every year in India, and it's becoming more difficult to stand out and get people to buy the books. The only way to get people notice the book is to create a buzz much before it's released.

Not all new books carry endorsements, and I wouldn't say that blurbs are indispensable for marketing.

Writers aren't in competition with one another. It isn't a zero sum game. If you have a good book, a good cover, a good product description, and a low price, you can sell well.

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.

I am an author, and like many in my profession, I am also a traveling salesman, going all over in an attempt to persuade people to spend twenty-five dollars on a hardcover book by me.

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?

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.

With the big publishers, they publish 50 books and promote five.

Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.

Whether you work with a small or corporate press, the important thing is to have realistic expectations in terms of sales, promotion, and the work you have to do as an author promoting your novel.

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.

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.

I feel luck plays a vey crucial role in determining the success of the book. Marketing a book is also very important. You need to try all tricks in the trade.