Publishing Contract Quotes

I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.

Many writers will get a contract by selling chapters and outlines or something like that. I wrote the entire novel, and when it was all finished, I would give it to my agent and say, 'Well, here's a novel; sell it if you can.' And they would do that, and it was good because I never had anyone looking over my shoulder.

I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea.

I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.

I did the first Parker novel, in which he got caught, and the editor at Pocket Books took me to lunch and said, 'Is there any way that this guy could get away at the end, and you could do three books a year for us?' And I said, 'I think so.'

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.

I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.

When I got my first publishing deal, I felt some responsibility to try to write with the people that they were asking me to write with.

A publisher is simply a useful middle-man.

I don't have a publisher yet, so I'm not in the process of that next stage and I don't know what that's going to look like. So I feel like I finished stage one [with my book].

I got a couple of different contacts from publishing companies saying they'd be interested in a book about my work: not a kiss-and-tell book, which I specifically put in the contract. Just a book about my work and what I did.

A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.

I have represented people in book deals.

Your agent should be invested in the success of your book past the contract stage. After all, if it sells well, she's going to be getting 15 percent of every dime you make. She can be your best advocate in fighting for your book - not just with editing and the cover, but with marketing and sales as well.

I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.

One shouldn't say yes in desperation to the first publisher who approaches. New authors especially should wait and weigh their deal and agree only when they are sure that they have landed themselves a good offer.

I don't take advances for my books.

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea.

The normal reaction of a publisher when faced with an author with a bee in his bonnet is to grab the check and run.

Some people are just so happy to get published to, they sign anything. Next thing you know, they've signed over the rights to their book.

But I guess the first time I made career money was signing a publishing deal when I was still at uni. That was when I waited to tell my mum that I was dropping out, which was half-way through my first year.

I didn't do anything but write for six months after I got my publishing deal. That was just trying to get better and figure out my sound and the way I like to do it.

The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised.

The standard publishing contract is replete with clauses that strip authors of control over their books.