Mal Peet Quotes

I don't take advances for my books.

I think you have to have a publishing house that offers you some support.

As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.

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.

The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised.

I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea.

The normal reaction of a publisher when faced with an author with a bee in his bonnet is to grab the check and run.

For a very long time, I thought everyone I met through the process of getting an agent and a publishing deal had made a mistake. When they agreed to pay me for the book, I thought they would ask me for the money back.

I know one author whose royalty income has been halved from £34,000 a year to £16,000.

We, the authors, want people to buy books. That is the only way we can earn - from our royality.

The first book advance I got was paid out in thirds. And over time, as I've had different deals, the advances get chopped up into ever-smaller parcels.

I think it is worse [in 2015] for a mid-list author such as myself. You either have to sell like Stephen King or go with the small presses where there is no money. I was lucky to have been in the right place and time for many years.

Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn't mean people have stopped reading books. Printed books won't go away, but ebooks won't go away, either.

If a traditional publisher offered me a quarter of a million dollars for a novel, I'd consider it. But anything less than that, I'm sure I can do better on my own.

I know dozens of authors who have had a lot of books published by New York, and they won't ever take another Big 6 contract since they've gotten a taste of the freedom, control, and money self-publishing offers.

I got a book deal without even turning in one shred of a writing sample.

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.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

Again, we turn down most books that have been self-published unless they have a special track record. We have taken a small number on, however, and sold them to major publishers for a nice sum. But that is an exception to the rule.

I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money.

I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.

I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.