Laura Miller Quotes

Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books.

Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.

I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.

Publishers, editors, agents all have one thing in common, aside from their love of cocktail parties. It's an incredible taste and an ability to find and nurture authors.

Publishers vet books, and they do a good job keeping out the low quality. But they also miss some good quality.

Agents are essential, because publishers will not read unsolicited manuscripts.

Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.

As always, a lot of bad books will be published. Some good books will be published, and you have to seek them out.

At every writers' conference, you have the opportunity to hear from best-selling authors, top literary agents, and excellent editors who will demystify the publishing industry and give you great advice, no matter where you are in your writing career or what you're currently struggling with.

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.

A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.

Seventeen publishers rejected the manuscript, at which time we knew we had something pretty hot.

Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

I remember when they started publishing Latino fiction years ago. You had to be really good to get published. Now you don't have to be that good.

Speak to any editor and ask them what they turned down, and they'll have long lists of books.

Very wonderful books might be published, and very terrible books might be published.

When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript.

I wrote a novel, Ghost Road Rules, and as soon as it was done and polished, I began reaching out to agents. I ignored the frequent advice to 'shoot low and try for a low-level agent because they're the only ones that will take a flyer on a new author.' That sounded like bad advice to me.

The way British publishing works is that you go from not being published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how bad you are.

A specific editor in a specific place likes the book, and you're in. A different editor on a different day goes, 'Oh, this isn't for me', or doesn't even look at it, and that's it.

My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant in a New York publishing house. Being an editorial assistant is the purgatory would-be editors must endure before they can ascend the ladder and begin acquiring books on their own. I spent a year filing paperwork, writing copy, and typing rejection letters.

I think publishers need to be the ones that publish the books and control that process: finding writers, helping them with their work, finding readers. I think writers need that.

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.