Charles Stross Quotes

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.

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.

It's really hard to get a book published, even a good book, but the better the book is the better chance it has of eventually catching someone's attention.

When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.

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.

I have students that I tell, "If your book doesn't sell or you can't publish it, write another book. Quit sitting around." The publishing world is a business, but it's not any big deal. An editor is not your guru. Your agent is not your guru.

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

You want to publish with a publisher because a publisher knows how to publish a book. And you don't. You really don't.

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

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

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

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.

The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.

I have always discouraged young writers from self-publishing, by which I mean going to a vanity publisher and spending your hard earned savings - say, some two-three lakhs - and getting your book printed. It's not published; it's printed!

I don't have a publisher yet, so I'm not in the process of that next stage and I don't know what that's going to look like. So I feel like I finished stage one [with my book].

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.

It used to be a lot easier to get a book deal.

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.

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.

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

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.

Of course, to publish something, you have to write it, polish it, then hire out the line editing, copy editing and cover design. After which, you pick your way through the minefield of conforming to the differing requirements of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, or hire someone to do it for you.

I knew people were independently publishing, and I buy books on Amazon. I began seriously considering it when Amanda Hocking was in the news about her self-publishing success.

Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.