Top 16 Quotes & Sayings by Dan Poynter

Five Minute Marketing is entertaining and thought provoking marketing advice by a Canadian for Canadians.

Book writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Anyone who decides to write a book must expect to invest a lot of time and effort without any guarantee of success. Books do not write themselves and they do not sell themselves. Authors write and promote their books.

Marriage is the only game where the trapped animal has to buy the license.

Do not collaborate with someone you would not go camping with.

Each step you take reveals a new horizon. You have taken the first step today. Now, I challenge you to take another.

Fiction writers can’t be trusted. They make things up.

Printing and transporting paper is very expensive, and e-books eliminate the expensive four-color printing, the higher quality paper, the ocean shipping, the customs clearance, the inventory, answering the telephone, writing up the orders, picking, packing and shipping and managing all of these functions. So we eliminate a huge number of costs and the chance that those books won't sell.

Run a test. Give a 5-year-old a printed book and an iPad and see what happens. That 5-year-old is going to go right for the iPad. They're not intimidated by it. They know what to do with it. They'll start searching around. And in a children's e-book, you can have links to kid-safe encyclopedia. So if they click on the lion, it takes them to Africa and tells them all about lions. So now, the e-book is educational.

Write on a subject you love. Your profit center should also be your passion center.

If you wait for inspiration to write you're not a writer, you're a waiter.

If the big publishers are doing so well, why do they require writers to send return postage with their manuscripts?

Copyright? Copy RIGHT: Steal ideas, steal facts but do not steal words.

If skydiving were safe, the parachute center would not require you to sign a waiver.

If only it were as easy to do the work of others as it is to criticize their performance.

A manuscript not submitted is a book not published.

Many first-time authors are not concerned about the advance or royalties, they want the notoriety. They get smarter on their second book and look for the money.