James Laughlin Quotes

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

I worked for a publishing company in Hollywood.

Over a four-month period, I sat down and wrote every day. And then there was a novel, and all of a sudden, there were agents and offers.

I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book.

My mother obviously was in the publishing business.

People do write books.

I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

I've never really thought of writing books. I've never thought about stories as a part of a collection.

Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books.

I enjoy writing. Publishing... not so much. I've been lucky to work with some very talented people in the publishing world, and the print industry has allowed me to write full time.

I try not to worry about rewriting books that worked well the first time. I'm too busy writing new books to worry about things that are already in print.

At the end of the 1950s, I started working at a publishing company, Estudios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before.

I haven't done a book for about 3 or 4 years now.

Contrary to popular belief, editors and agents are gagging for good books.

It generally takes me about nine months from the point the book is conceived to the point my editor sends it off to be typeset.

Would you care to publish this? Sincerely, Robert B. Parker.

There are so many good authors; there's no shortage of them.

It's funny because you know the novel process: you get the drafts, you get the galley, and then you get the galley proofs. You have opportunities to change things all along. But the further along in the process you go, the more careful you have to be in making those changes, and the smaller the changes have to be.

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 more than 100 legal pads filled with handwriting. Eight novels, two books for children, countless stories and essays.

New York is the place where they bind books and write blurbs and arrange the publicity and print the galleys... But Chicago is the place where the book is lived out before it is bound and the song is sung before it is recorded.

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

I don't write to create performance material; I write to make books.

I have no idea how people think of literary agents. Truthfully, I don't think they think of them very often.