Anna Todd Quotes

Writers aren't in competition with one another. It isn't a zero sum game. If you have a good book, a good cover, a good product description, and a low price, you can sell well.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

Before my book, 'California,' came out, I had modest hopes for it. Or, let's put it this way - I had the same hopes that every literary fiction writer in America has: I wanted the novel to be well-received, critically. As for sales? I didn't want it to disappoint, but I didn't expect it to be a best-seller, either.

I want my books sold on airport bookstalls.

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.

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

I'm just happy to have some American readers - enough that it's a viable proposition for my books to appear there.

The big bestsellers aren't being created by Barnes & Noble.

As an author, I love to know my book sells really well.

I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

I cranked out a book. I didn't expect it to do much, but it's sold 80,000 copies.

I really told my story as I saw it in 'Cross to Bear,' and I was pleased - and a bit surprised - by how well it was received and how it sold. No. 2 on the 'New York Times' bestseller list? I'll take that any day, my man!

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.

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.

In the first year, 1988, I wrote and sold 3 novels.

If you don't make the best-seller list, if you don't get shortlisted for any prizes, it's goodbye.

I didn't make 'The New York Times' bestseller list until 'Charmed Thirds,' and then again for 'Fourth Comings.' It gave me a certain validation, and it certainly helps position me for future books, but it's not something I think about on a daily basis.

The marketability, the success of a book, ultimately rests with whether or not people will find the concept/characters/title/cover appealing.

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

On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.

My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

'Made it as a writer'? I'm still wondering if I've made it as a writer. I've made it as a published writer of the type of SF that I want to write and read, but I'm still waiting for that big breakthrough.

What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge, not winning this prize or getting that review. It's that the work is there, and you can walk into many bookshops throughout the world and buy it.