Vince Flynn Quotes

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

I want to write a best-selling book.

It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.

The moment I said I'd finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who'd got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I'd written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

Everything is different - except for publishing itself: getting hold of an amazing author, working to make his or her book the best and best-looking it can be, telling the world.

My first novel, 'Housekeeping,' was accepted by the first agent who read it, and bought by the first editor who read it. In general, my experience with publication has been gentle and gratifying.

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

As I see it, my job has always been to champion the work of the authors I publish.

I never actually sought out an agent or a publishing house. A friend of mine named David Simmer got wind of what I was doing, and he sent one of my books to a literary lawyer in Los Angeles. He loved it, and he sent it to other people, including an agent, and he picked me up, and that's how 'Bird Box' got to where it is now.

It's hard for a newbie author to get noticed.

The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.

As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.

When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.

The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how 'Beyond This Dark House' appeared.

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.

If you look at the publishers I've worked with, generally, they're a great bunch. Creation is unlike any other publishing house you can think of. The people I've worked with have integrity and intelligence and, almost always, less money than ideas.

I cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.

The hard fact is that not everyone does get published.

After a while, if you're a writer, you want to start appearing in the bookstores of the place you're living in.

For me to be a billion-dollar author, I need to have people buying my books at Wal-Mart.

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.

Bantam Press. And they commissioned me to write it. And when that was completed, they sold it to Harper and Row. And then I put it out to every movie studio in town. And they all turned it down.

In the end, I want to spend my 60s writing bonkbusters like Jilly Cooper.

I've been associated with Macmillan for over 45 years. I'd like to thank them for their continued commitment to my backlist and I look forward to continuing to work with them as they publish my next novel, 'Vicious Circle' in 2013.

Selling a book or story has never become absolutely automatic for me.