I believe that online paid content hasn't worked for general circulation newspapers because consumers weren't ready for it, because the implementation did not deliver enough value, because content was typically the same as in the print version, and because much of the material was being syndicted by the papers to other publishers or was not protected with DRM technologies to exclude use by others.
All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.
I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.
I'm not a great shopper but I do buy a lot of books. I'm the publishers' friend - I buy a hundred books a year and read four.
Console game publishing has become more like theatrical release film-making and it is very hard if you are not one of the major publishers, and even for them it is hard unless they are working with major game brands.
Sometimes many publishers prefer that you write the same book every time, but I have a low boredom threshold so that isn't going to happen.
Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value. They'll be the richest, the most successful, the most connected, capable and influential among us. We're all publishers now, and the more we publish, the more valuable connections we'll make.
When I started, there were no big interviews, no television, no profiles and all that. The publishers were quite shockingly uncommercial, but they did look after their writers.
Writers rush in where publishers fear to tread and where translators fear to tread
I've had good publishers and bad publishers, and you've got to learn when the advice is sensible and when it's not.
The walls are the publishers of the poor.
And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages- all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronized, put-down and underpaid person. '
Much as constitutional guarantees of press freedom do little good for prospective publishers if they do not have access to paper or ink, the right to aid in dying is strikingly useless if nobody is willing to help.
I failed, many times in my life. One failure that I always remember was when my second book was rejected by 36 publishers. Many years later, I watched HuffPost come alive
Being with a small publisher has been huge. They bat for me for everything.
The first book I did - the first successful book - was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more.
Publishers are private businesspeople who must reach their economic goals independently.
As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.
People have bad things to say about publishers, but I think they still have services, and I want to see what they are. And if they end up not being any good, I don't have to keep using them.
I think it's a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as story-telling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers.
