Alan Moore Quotes

As large publishers turn into monopolies, and the MBAs who are running them - maybe editors used to run them before - are steadily tightening the screws, they feel more and more that they get to call the shots.

When there are fewer and fewer publishers of scale, it's just not good for authors.

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.

I know dozens of authors who have had a lot of books published by New York, and they won't ever take another Big 6 contract since they've gotten a taste of the freedom, control, and money self-publishing offers.

The profession is never going back to those days when a handful of wealthy people treated publishing like a hobby: one where the business can lose money because the family has lots of it to burn. Frankly, I don't think that model was ever sustainable, and it really only enriched a small number of writers.

The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.

All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.

Publishing is a business. It's about squeezing every last dollar out of every available source, and the most vulnerable source is the author. No clearer proof of that exists than the 'standard' book contract.

Self-publishing has been a dubious challenge to traditional publishers, at best.

All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions.

Even in my side of the world, I've been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it's gone from being a gentlemen's club to being a few big players, and it's very corporatised.

Cars did not kill off horses. Digital publishing will not kill off books.

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

The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.

Advances have fallen, generally, for everything except the biggest potential bestsellers. Given all the changes, both economic and technological, SF hasn't done too badly.

The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made.

When business became big business - conglomerates employing hundreds and even thousands of people - companies divided themselves into still smaller units.

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.

Once you privatize something, it becomes a for-profit business.

I don't sign contracts for my books.

Authors will make far more on those ebooks through direct sales than publishers are offering. There is no incentive for authors to sell those rights to traditional publishers which means, in the fairly short term, publishers run out of material to sell.

I think that the continuity of what I do as an editor with what I did when I started out 40 years ago is very direct. The delivery system is changing and will continue to, but the actual interaction between publisher and author is exactly the same.

When a single author uploading his own books to Amazon can earn more money than a large N.Y. publisher exploiting both print and e-rights, there's something amiss.

Higher ebook prices only benefit one group: publishers.

Writers usually don't get to pick our own covers. I know it's surprising to hear that.