A Quote by Anthony Burgess
With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.
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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.'
I see publishers bemoaning their fate and saying that this is the end of publishing. No! Publishers will recreate themselves. Some of that comes from my experience as a print publisher.
Agents are essential, because publishers will not read unsolicited manuscripts.
Agents are deal makers, and they're really, really good at making deals. But they're also exceptionally helpful after the deal is made - agents act as a good intermediary between authors and publishers whenever disagreements come up.
I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That's my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.
By making marijuana illegal, the agricultural people can't grab hold of it like they did with corn and wheat. So those companies are scrambling around trying to get hold of it, but they can't, because it's a cottage industry, and it will always be a cottage industry. Because the minute the big companies try to make it their own, like they did with soybeans...like Monsanto, they put their own patent on seeds, and you can't do that with marijuana.
Turn right up ahead," he directed. "It'll take us directly to my cottage." She did as he asked. "Does your cottage have a name?" "My Cottage." "I might have known," she muttered. He smirked. Quite a feat, in her opinion, since he looked sick as a dog. "I'm not kidding," he said. Sure enough, in another minute they pulled up in front of an elegant country house, complete with a small, unobtrusive sign in front reading, MY COTTAGE
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.
When you are an actor or trying to be a working actor in L.A., most people have commercial agents, and then they have legitimate agents, and you just end up going on a thousand auditions.
I deal with the authors I work with, agents, and other departments of the company, talking about both the books that I'm working on and everyone else's. Then there's dealing with foreign publishers: foreigners visit all the time. People want to bounce things off the publisher, and a lot of it is encouragement.
After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.
Agents and publishers only want one thing - good writing.
Be hungry for success, hungry to make your mark, hungry to be seen and to be heard and to have an effect. And as you move up and become successful, make sure also to be hungry for helping others.
It's hard to know what [literature] will end up being timeless and what will be something that doesn't translate into the future, especially with the way we're evolving since our culture is changing so fast.
In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.
I love the fact publishers are still publishing unprofitable material. It's a challenge to the powers that be. It's saying there is a real literature in this country and we will keep publishing it.
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