Stephen King Quotes

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!

Actually, I love trying to figure out why certain books become hits while others, which may be just as good, have trouble finding an audience.

My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

I think it is serious to have good sales. As I learned belatedly, the more you sell, the more publishers pay attention to you, and it took me a very long time to figure that out because I never thought that way.

Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!

My Kindle readers have been incredibly faithful fans.

My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers.

I think it's a fallacy to say that a good book sells itself. It doesn't happen. I'm a voracious reader and I can give you a long list of books which should have been best sellers but they aren't. How can you buy a book if you haven't heard of it?

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.

As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.

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.

As an author, I really hate a reader like me. There's no loyalty.

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

I don't know if she should worry too much, I mean some of our greatest writers have had movies made of their books, lots of Hemingway novels were turned into movies, it doesn't hurt the book.

I recognize that I'm probably the luckiest novelist in recent memory, because Sherman Alexie, a writer I greatly admire, raved about my book on 'The Colbert Report,' and then Mr. Colbert himself urged his viewers to buy it - on his show and on Twitter.

Publicity doesn't work for books. It really doesn't. All it does is get your name in front of a reader who might then glance at your book. Or not.

I find it hard to think of myself as selling books. I don't even have a Web site. I want to sit and write, not sell.

Putting out a book is absolutely a lesson in vulnerability because it doesn't matter how much of an audience you have. Some people who have giant audiences can't sell books because those audiences don't feel like they need to give them their money.

I have the most loyal readers in the world.

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

When you're writing for the Internet, you have the analytics, and you know that people are bailing every second. But various people kept reminding me that once people have bought a book, they're in. You don't have to be selling them on every page.

Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works.

To move up to hardcover is a way of getting more attention for my books. It means a lot to me: It means my books are legitimate.

If a reader likes a particular author, they keep reading all his books, and if the supply is not kept up, then the reader shifts his loyalties.

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.