Tim Fish Quotes

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 have my own publishing company called 'I Am McLovin Publishing.'

People have bad things to say about publishers, but I think they still have services, and I want to see what they are. And if they end up not being any good, I don't have to keep using them.

It's been more than a decade since I put that self-published novel, 'Lip Service', up on a website. Since then, many hundreds of authors have gone from self-published to traditionally published.

How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow.

I did have a nice career in print, but traditional publishers don't always have the resources to create individualized marketing for their authors. Mine never figured out how to package books as hot as mine so that they found their full audience. Finally, I got frustrated enough over my lack of traction to walk away.

I doubt I'll ever have another traditional print deal.

Self-publishing worked for me. Being able to put your work in print, even if it's a tiny print-on-demand print run of a dozen or so copies, shows publishers and editors a completed piece of work and that you can follow through on a project.

When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it.

My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers.

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

I had written children's books for 14 years before I published 'Wicked.' And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed.

I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books.

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.

Indie writers who promote their book instead of writing the next book are wasting their time. The more books you've written, the more books you'll sell. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.

It's easier to release an ebook than a print book.

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 you're going to self - publish, you need to know why you're doing it, what you want to accomplish, and how you plan to implement that.

Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I could quit my job as a journalist. Turns out it was closer to 10 books. It also turns out that while it's great to see my titles on bookstore shelves, my best customers are schools and libraries.

Electronic distribution is more of a fall-back strategy for putting out a book that isn't deemed profitable enough to print. You hardly make any money publishing an electronic book.

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.

Never index your own book.

Print-on-demand publishing is the new farm system for new voices in fiction. Authors who have compelling things to say, who can market their stories in compelling ways, will succeed.

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.

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.