Book Appeal Quotes

I think one reason my books have found mainstream success is that they're written from a skeptical point of view.

I argued strongly to the American publisher that 'Reality Hunger' should come out first. They thought that 'The Thing About Life' would have more appeal because it's on a broader topic; it's about mortality rather than art.

We really tried hard not to make it a cricket book, it appeals to a much wider community.

With the audience I write for, I want to make sure that the reader is eagerly turning every page. I want each of my books to be an absorbing reading experience, an authentic piece of literature. The worst thing that can happen is for a book to have a chilling effect on the reader, to have a kid pick it up and look at a bunch of footnotes and think, No, I'm not going to read this, it's too intimidating.

Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Lee Child and George R. R. Martin write wildly different books. Their writing, plotting and styles have little or nothing in common. But they all write books and characters that readers find appealing.

I don't think too much about the audience when I'm writing... I'm aware that 'Holes' was read by kids as young as 8, up to adults.

No one wants to read an apologetic book.

A blurb might bring a reader to a book, but then the book itself has to do the rest of the work.

I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

'What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'

I tend not to think about audience when I'm writing. Many people who read 'The Giver' now have their own kids who are reading it. Even from the beginning, the book attracted an audience beyond a child audience.

Kids think books are cool, especially when they see that people they think books are cool are reading.

I picked books by their covers - the worse the cover, the more I wanted to read it.

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

No one knows why books do well.

I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low.

A large part of the appeal of this novel when I was lucky enough to stumble across the story idea for 'A Head Full of Ghosts' was that I'd finally be writing a horror novel. In a lot of ways, the book is both my criticism of and love letter to horror.

No matter how beautiful the paper, artwork, printing, and binding, I'm seldom drawn to a book unless it's by a writer I care about or on a subject that appeals to me.

It's a woman's book but I think the men will read it too.

What makes a publisher decide to market a book to a particular audience is not the subject matter but the style.

I think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they're going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.

A book on cheap paper does not convince. It is not prized, it is like a wheezy doctor with pigtail tobacco breath, who needs a manicure.

I used to want covers that represented the book's contents very closely and were also pretty. Many folks automatically believe that this is what makes a good cover. But I've changed my mind about this. While the cover should not lie (by implication or outright), its job is simply to say: 'Pick me up!' to someone who might like the book.

Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.

So every so often, when I meet someone who's honestly appalled by my books and doesn't understand why they would be attractive to people... I find such people sort of charming, even though they usually don't like me.