Nancy A. Collins Quotes

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 started out as a novelist and wrote several novels before deciding to publish one, and I fully intend to go back to the form.

Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.

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.

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.

By 17, I was submitting to publications and collecting my first rejection slips.

The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.

You come out of your MFA program with a cogent clutch of stories, trying to get an agent interested, and she or he admits these are quality, sure, but this agent actually needs something the publisher can make money on. So you get kind of bullied by the market into writing a novel.

I always talk to young writers about when you make art in your room, you make art. And when you send it to New York and L.A., you have to be a professional. Of course, when you sell your book rights as an option for a movie, you have to be a professional about that.

We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

Thus far, I've devoted my entire career to publishing genre short fiction, but I now look forward to applying that same level of curation to finding the best new novels and new authors.

I have only one bit of advice to the beginning writer: Be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I didn't say I have to be a writer, but I did say that I needed to publish at least one book.

As I see it, my job has always been to champion the work of the authors I publish.

In the early 2000s, I started selling some short stories to horror markets. I joined the Horror Writers Association.

Getting an agent is hard, and I also think people rush to get an agent too soon.

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

When I was in my mid-twenties, I was a copy editor at Doubleday, and for a brief period, it was my job to help shepherd Pat Conroy's 'Beach Music' into the world.

Wandering the book fair at AWP is a great way to get acquainted with a wide sampling of the diverse journals that are out there and the wide sampling of people who produce them.

I tried for years to get an agent because I was told you needed an agent. The agent-hunting process was grim indeed.

One of the epiphanies I had was that I got into publishing because I love literature.

When I first started submitting my work professionally - and we're talking years and years ago - I had no patience for editorial response times. I hated waiting to hear back from people, hated waiting to see my work in print.

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.