Ryan North Quotes

An author needs to be in the market. He or she needs to come out with a new book every year. That keeps you alive in the public mind and gives a push to your older books.

Sadly, I don't think books ever sell based on your name alone - the minute we make an assumption like that is the minute it all goes horribly wrong!

In my first 15 or 20 years of authorship, I was almost never asked to give a speech or an interview. The written work was supposed to speak for itself, and to sell itself, sometimes even without the author's photograph on the back flap.

I wouldn't encourage new writers to start off publishing through electronic media... it still isn't wide enough for the readership they would need to get a good start.

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

Publish and be damned.

The distribution might which Penguin brought to the table and the stature they gave me as an author is unparalleled.

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.

I actually own a copy of my own book; that's how dedicated I am as an author.

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.

I earned my writing stripes with a large man's shoebox overflowing with rejection slips... more than 100 before I got my first, 'Yes, we want this,' accompanied by a check.

I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

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.

Maybe self-publishing is going to be an extra step added to publishing. Maybe what's going to happen is you self-publish a book, someone notices it - an agent? - and it goes from there into the traditional sphere.

It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

Today, there are more opportunities for writers in terms of access to larger success, but it's more difficult to publish a literary novel in the lower ranges. In other words, you almost have to hit a home run. You can hit a triple, maybe, but nobody's interested in a single.

I've been very lucky with prizes. But the thing about prizes is that, when you talk about a prize-winning author, you can be talking about one that is well-regarded but doesn't sell any books.

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

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.

Many readers know my work first through 'Housekeeping,' simply because it was my only novel for a pretty long time.

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

I think the more avenues that open up when people want to publish, the better. Some of the authors that want to jump ship from the traditional houses and go on their own, you know what? Good luck. It's going to be a lot tougher than you think.