Erica Jong Quotes

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.

People generally don't recognize how long it takes to conceive, publish, and write a book.

Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place.

Start writing the things that you are reading or that you want to be published doing.

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

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 was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.

All writing and publishing is very difficult, regardless of genre. There are going to be obstacles no matter what.

It's easy to get published once you have written a really good book and the hard part, 99 percent of what you need to worry about, is really finishing it.

It's always hard to write and get your words out there, to find an editor, a publisher - readers! - who are going to appreciate them.

I didn't say I have to be a writer, but I did say that I needed to publish at least one book.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.

Some books and authors are best sellers, but most aren't. It may be easier to self-publish than it is to traditionally publish, but in all honesty, it's harder to be a best seller self-publishing than it is with a house.

Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.

Having books published is very destructive to writing.

Teaching other people to write is not something I can do. The only kind of advice I can give them will be trite by its nature. Of course, read a lot, write a lot. The kind of advice I wish I had been given is all of a practical nature, having to do with publishers and agents.

I tend to write things and don't go the next step and try to get it published. I don't want to do book signings and stuff.

I started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.

I wrote my first novel-length story when I was 14 but had no idea what to do with it. Brisbane was a long way from the publishing industry then. Nowhere's a long way from the publishing industry now.

Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published.

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

I had already drafted the manuscript that would become my first book by the time I graduated from college, but I had no idea what to do with it.

I wrote that letter, and the one to Nixon. And I wrote more letters, and I thought it might be a magazine article. At that time I sent it to Esquire and Playboy, but anyway, I kept writing, and all of sudden I had enough and thought, well maybe it is a book.