Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses.

Making books has always felt very connected to my bookselling experience, that of wanting to draw people's attention to things that I liked, to shape things that I liked into new shapes.

I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.

I'm very privy to the way bookstores work, and I think a lot about the ecosystem that my books have been published in. I think it's great to be aware of how publishing works.

Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve.

And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages- all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person.'

All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books. b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments. c. Poets: people who raze monuments. d. Publishers: people who sell rubble. e. Readers: people who buy it.

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

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.

Paperbacks weren't considered real books in the book trade. Up till then it was just murder mysteries, potboilers, 25-cent pocket books sold in newsstands. When the New York publishers started publishing quality paperbacks, there was no place to buy them.

A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative.

What I've discovered more recently is copies of books that I didn't represent, but that my boss represented when I assisted her on the dollar pile. I won't mention any names, but it is this profoundly bittersweet time of realizing, "Oh, I had a wonderful time working on this book and now it is a dollar relic on the side of the road."

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.

When you get the ideas, that's a thrill; when you're writing the book and it's corning out well, that's a thrill; when you finish it and other people read it, that's a thrill. There are going to be reviews, of course; not everyone's going to love it. You feel sort of naked and vulnerable in a way. That's just a minor part of the process, really. If you can't take that part, you shouldn't be in the business. But there are so many joys to writing.

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.

The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.

When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.

Who are those ever multiplying authors that with unparalleled fecundity are overstocking the world with their quick succeeding progeny? They are novel-writers.

Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

I'd like to sell a lot of books.

I write books and either people read them or they don't read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn't change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas.

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn’t easy, but it’s fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

People should be interested in books, not their authors.