I remember a period where my publisher said to me, 'Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.'
If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.
To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution.
As soon as I finished 'The Finkler Question,' I was in despair. I'd changed my English publisher because they'd been lukewarm about it and not offered enough money. The American publisher didn't like it. The Canadian publisher didn't like it... I'd been bleeding readers since my first novel, and I could see my own career going down.
No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.
A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.
Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey have been successful in their self-publishing ventures. But notice that Hocking would prefer to write and hand over the editing, promotion, and selling to a traditional publisher.
I do voiceovers, but being on-camera and selling something? I wasn't really interested. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. Everybody's selling something. When you turn on the tube... And then if you go to Europe or Asia, everyone is selling something. All the guys that don't want to be seen selling something here are selling something there. So I thought what the hell?
Certainly, I had a wonderful push from my publisher and got very lucky. I'm very aware of what it means to have a publisher back you. But your job as a writer, no matter what else is happening, is to continue to produce work-whether you're succeeding or failing.
I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.
I sent a lot of publishing ideas to my publisher, about 30 of them. Each time except 3, i got a "rejection letter". This is basically what a rejection letter is like: Hello Pathetic Moron, We read your book. It sucked. Don't send us another one. If you do, we will run over your grandmother with a bus. Don't Do It. From, Your Publisher
When you are giving a certain portion of your life to people and you're selling it sexually, you're selling it sensually, and you're selling it romantically - for you to then take that portion that you give only to fans away and to give it to one person, it kind of... if they don't approve, it might be crickets for me.
You want to publish with a publisher because a publisher knows how to publish a book. And you don't. You really don't.
We had tried to get a couple books that were written about Ray Kroc, and one of the books, we called the publisher. The publisher actually said, "Call McDonald."
Because Comic Con in San Diego is crazy, and it's very commercialized, and it's corporate, and it's all about money and selling, selling, selling... I think people want to go to smaller, specialized cons.
As difficult as it is for a writer to find a publisher-admittedly a daunting task-it is twice as difficult for a publisher to sort through the chaff, select the wheat, and profitably publish a worthy list.