J. A. Konrath Quotes

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

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.

My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

I want to write a best-selling book.

I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books.

I'm surviving and developing as a writer. I don't know what brings you to mass attention in terms of sales. But I've gotten more and more comfortable with it. Of course if that changes, I'll be comfortable with that. All I can do is write the best books I can.

I know very well that one cannot become an author by just writing a book.

I published 'Rules of Civility' while I was still working. It became a best seller. I was working on this book, and then I decided to retire.

Buying new books supports the writer by providing both a royalty and an audience; a writer whose book sells well has a better chance of selling another.

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.

Writers aren't in competition with one another. It isn't a zero sum game. If you have a good book, a good cover, a good product description, and a low price, you can sell well.

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.

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.

Every author believes that the book which he is placing before the public will 'fill a long-felt want,' and success or failure depends very much on how closely he has been able to gauge the nature of the 'long-felt want.'

In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.

Indie writers who promote their book instead of writing the next book are wasting their time. The more books you've written, the more books you'll sell. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.

The marketability, the success of a book, ultimately rests with whether or not people will find the concept/characters/title/cover appealing.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

I believe if you write a great book, the chances are it'll get a great reception.

As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.

When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.