I studied writing at university, and I actually majored in screenwriting. Then I went to work as a bookseller and then as a sales rep and publicist and then various editorial jobs until I ended up with HarperCollins in Australia.
For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages.
I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid.
When I was 13, I had a weekend job at the Photographers Gallery Bookshop in London.
Any independent bookstore that has managed to survive is the best place to do a reading.
I am a big advocate of the role of the bookstore in the community.
My parents were in the book business, my brothers still run the Dutton bookstores in Los Angeles, and I've been interested in editing books and journals all of my life.
Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.
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.
I worked in a bookstore in Oslo, importing the English-language books.
I've always wanted to buy a bookstore. You know, sell some of those muffins and a little coffee. I don't care if we make any money. I don't want to lose a lot of money, but we could visit with people and get books.
I think that writing texts, publishing texts, selling texts in a physical book store is one of the important tools for breeding this new generation.
I part-own a bookshop for some strange coincidence of reasons, and it is one of the best things I part-own in my life, or own in my life. I do not know, it just feels great.
If you're a retailer and know that once a year you're going to get Mary Higgins Clark's book on a given date, you're going to have an awful lot of copies out there in time for that. You'd have to be simple-minded not to do that - although bookselling prior to 1950 never made that connection.
It seems the world of book publishing is constantly changing. Whether it was the rise of chain stores or their decline, or the digital revolution... fortunately, we have been able not only to adapt but to thrive.
It's funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library - Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.
I wanted to be a librarian from a very young age. Some of my earliest memories are being taken to the local library. I ended up working as a bookseller. Becoming a writer was the logical offshoot of being a reader.
I love to walk into Borders or Barnes & Noble and see my books there. It's fabulous.
When I was a boy, my parents were writers and they owned a bookstore, 'The Complete Traveler in New York,' so writing and books have held special places in my heart all my life.
Owning a bookstore was right up there with acting in life goals, but other than swaggering around the store, I'm not much use.
It's not easy making a living as a writer, and for many years I worked at a Waterstones in Dublin. It was a good environment for an aspiring writer, with lots of events and authors appearing.
By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job.
I think the book business is really sitting on the greatest moment in the history of time. We are providing the stories to the hungry public. We have more avenues to do it than ever before.
The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.
I plan to live to be 98, so I'll be the guy at Dundas and Yonge flogging a box of mouldy novels.
