A Quote by Padgett Powell

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

Padgett Powell

Quote Topics

Accidental Best Book Career Copies Day Day Job Going Got Job Might Sell Very Write

Quote Author

Padgett Powell
American - Novelist
Born: April 25, 1952

Obviously, there are those in the industry who don't give romance novels the level of respect the sales would warrant. They'll talk about a book that sells maybe 100,000 copies, that happens to be very literary, whereas something like 'Crossfire' will sell 13 million copies in a single language and hardly get any mentions at all.

Sylvia Day

People say 'chick lit,' and what they mean is 'crap.' And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize. These are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them.

Lisa Jewell

I don't want to write things that people don't want to read. I would have no pleasure in producing something that sold 600 copies but that was considered very wonderful. I would prefer to sell 20,000 copies because the readers loved it. When I write books I don't actually think about the market in that way. I just tell myself the story. I don't think I'm talking to a 10-year-old boy or a six-year-old girl. I just write on the level the story seems to call for.

Emily Rodda

You can be in the Bay and sell 10,000 copies of independent records and make 50 grand and that's your job for the year. The shows you do off of that and them 10,000 sales is gonna feed you and your homies.

Too Short

Don't hire anyone - no matter what they offer - who promises you they'll sell 'X' copies of your book. Every book is different. The best any marketing company or PR firm can do for your book is make potential readers aware of it.

M. J. Rose

Some day I'll write a book and call it 'How I Got the Nickname Pumpsie' and sell it for one dollar, and if everybody who ever asked me that question buys the book, I'll be a millionaire.

Pumpsie Green

Even if you are lucky enough to sell a trilogy, you don't know if you'll ever get to write that whole trilogy. I have many friends who had very long arcs planned in multi-book series that they never got to write because the first book didn't perform.

Leigh Bardugo

What you've got is 30,000 people calling you an asshole.- Stone Cold Steve Austin What I've got is 30,000 people I couldn't care less if they lived or died.

Triple H

I've never asked for more money, not one time in my career. I fought Demian Maia for $30,000. The No. 2 guy in the world, I was fighting for $30,000. So I don't care about money.

Colby Covington

Many years ago I had two small children, and I wanted to be able to be home when they got home from school. And I didn't like the direction journalism was taking. I thought if I could write books, I could work at home and have the best of both worlds. I wrote my first mystery while still working full time, and it didn't sell, but the next one did sell, so I quit my job for the world of fiction. Scary, but I've never regretted it for a single day.

Mary Kay Andrews

I don't like walking in the street and seeing 30,000 copies of myself.

John Lydon

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.

Harlan Coben

I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.

Charles McCarry

I have to write three books a year to make a reasonable living out of writing - unless, of course, she gets a major American film deal. Phryne has been optioned since the very first book, but to make a historical TV movie, it costs $30,000 a day extra for the historical detail to be correct, so most people aren't doing it.

Kerry Greenwood

I thought, if I write a book that is not a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, it's not going to mean that I will not get any criticism. I might as well write the book that I want to write.