Jasmine Cresswell Quotes

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

One shouldn't say yes in desperation to the first publisher who approaches. New authors especially should wait and weigh their deal and agree only when they are sure that they have landed themselves a good offer.

Probably because I really love this bookmaking and storytelling world, I'd been thinking for years about the possibility of becoming a literary agent.

In so many ways, being a literary agent is an irresistible job to me. Not only does it involve all the things I love - being an advocate for others, problem solving, and going to meetings - yes, that's true, I love meetings, though everyone says it's bizarre! - but most importantly, I love working with people whose writing excites me.

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.

Anuj Bahari has always been a really good literary agent for me. What a good agent does is that he manages many of your business aspects so you can keep your time free for writing.

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 think that a really good agent should be able to get the right publisher, which the agent has already figured out, get as much money as she can from that publisher, and make a deal, rather than have the amount of money determine the sale. That's what the best agents do.

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

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.

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

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.

I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.

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 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.

I am hoping to work with writers publishing books for first time, since I of course remember what that experience is like. It's all a bit of a mystery for new authors who don't know what to expect.

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.

I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock.

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.

I can ask for a £25,000 advance, but then you spend a year writing the book, and £25,000 is a loan against sales, and you can easily spend five years earning out. So that's £25,000 for six years.

You have to remember that in addition to running a literary agency, I am also an ebook publisher.

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.

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

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.