Margaret Atwood Quotes

Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place.

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

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.

Having books published is very destructive to writing.

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.

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.

Some people have an unrealistic expectation when it comes to getting published; the fact is most publishers will turn down your work which is why you need to be persistent.

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.

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.

The advice would be the same for any kind of fiction. Keep writing, and keep sending things out, not to friends and relatives, but to people who have the power to buy. A lot of additional, useful tips could be added, but this is fundamental.

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

At every writers' conference, you have the opportunity to hear from best-selling authors, top literary agents, and excellent editors who will demystify the publishing industry and give you great advice, no matter where you are in your writing career or what you're currently struggling with.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.

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.

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.

It's hard for a newbie author to get noticed.

I've had good publishers and bad publishers, and you've got to learn when the advice is sensible and when it's not.

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

When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!

I have been incredibly lucky with my novels but I had absolutely no idea if anyone would be interested in a cookbook. So I started to think about self-publishing.

I wrote my first novel-length story when I was 14 but had no idea what to do with it. Brisbane was a long way from the publishing industry then. Nowhere's a long way from the publishing industry now.

How lucky am I? Quite often I speak at book festivals, and people ask me how I got published. There's people who have been working on a book for as long as ten years, and I feel like such a cow.

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.

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

It takes a long time to publish a book.