Sarah Dessen Quotes

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

I think having a good agent is key. I've been with mine for ten years now, and she's very honest with me. There are a lot of times I've sent her books that were not so good because I was tired of writing, or panicked about money, and she's told me flat out, "You don't want this to be your next book. Trust me."

Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.

A literary agent is nothing but a cheap salesman (or woman); while a writer is a cheap salesman (or woman) who also has to actually write the books.

A nonfiction author has to bring a platform with him - radio, a TV show or some kind of recognizable vehicle to help launch them. And the agent is really necessary to represent all of the business interests of the author.

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

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.

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.

Of course, people say maybe there are some self-published books out there that shouldn't be out there. Well, it's the same with conventional publishing.

I wrote a query letter to an editor - a friend of a friend. The editor called me an idiot, told me never to contact an editor directly, and then recommended three literary agents he had worked with before. Laurie Fox was one of them, and I've never looked back.

Agents are essential, because publishers will not read unsolicited manuscripts.

I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he's very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me.

The only time I was ever approached to write a book was when I was most famous.

There are 195 crime books published in Sweden every year. You could cut that to 100 and keep the good ones.

If a writer I represent gets a bad or unfair review, I suffer. I'm upset and outraged and do everything I can to try and change that. But I would never do that on behalf of my own book because I wouldn't expect my writers to do that.

I will only do something if it has credibility for me, and that includes the films I make, the TV shows I judge and ad-campaigns I sign up for.

If you want to be traditionally published, then you most likely want to get a literary agent. To sign with an agent, you need to send them a query letter, but agents can get up to 20,000 query letters a year. With numbers like that, it helps to get in front of agents with every opportunity you have.

Few books today are forgivable.

My age is my own private business and I intend to keep it so - if I can. I am not so old that I am ashamed of my age and I am not so young that I couldn't have written my book and that is all the public needs to know about my age.

Of course I had a piece of luck I couldn't have imagine for myself in a million years: I got an agent. That sped up the process. I'd say it's a good idea, getting an agent.

There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self-esteem.

What more do I need to say? Conservative books sell. I can't help it if liberal books don't sell.

You really need to approach each book as if you have been a failure. . . . If you start to believe your flap-copy, you're finished as a writer.

I think people need to remember that a book isn't done after a few rewrites and a publisher isn't going to buy an 'undone' book so the hard part is making it a book that at least ten other people want to pay for to read.

Always I'm working on some of book. That's the way I make a living.