57 Inspiring Publishing Quotes

In the ever-evolving world of publishing, words possess the unparalleled power to influence, inspire, and transform lives. From timeless literary classics to groundbreaking modern narratives, the art of crafting stories and messages remains at the heart of human connection. Whether you're a budding author, an experienced editor, or simply a lover of the written word, the wisdom and insights of those who tread this creative path before us offer invaluable inspiration. In this curated collection of 57 inspiring publishing quotes, discover the profound insights and reflections that capture the essence of storytelling, creativity, and the enduring impact of the written word.

1. “I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.” - George Bernard Shaw

2. “Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.” - Fran Lebowitz

3. “It wouldn't happen... There hasn't been one publication by a monkey” - Karl Pilkington

4. “It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini.” - Al Silverman

5. “Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.” - Hunter S. Thompson

6. “It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author's script almost without query. The Canadian practice is just what you would expect--a middle-of-the-road course. We think the Americans edit too heavily and interfere with the author's rights. We think that the English publishers don't take enough editorial responsibility. Naturally, then, we consider our editing to be just about perfect. There's no doubt about it, we Canadians are a superior breed! (in a letter to author Margaret Laurence, dated May, 1960)” - Jack McClelland

7. “I have always believed in the principle that immediate survival is more important than long-term survival.” - Jack McClelland

8. “NEWSPAPER: What great paper is the Earth; what a typeface is the Day; what ink is the Night! – Everyone prints, everyone reads; no one understands.” - Xavier Forneret

9. “Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose flame will last longer?” - Roman Payne

10. “Dream up a book on Monday, publish it on Friday.” - Jill Novak

11. “Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.” - Stephen King

12. “Publicamos para não passar a vida a corrigir rascunhos. Quer dizer, a gente publica um livro para livrar-se dele” - Jorge Luis Borges

13. “Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.” - Margaret Atwood

14. “Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you.” - Zig Ziglar

15. “We do not like the truth because it is simple, we do not want the truth because it is hard, and we do not trust the truth because it is free. Perhaps because many are idealists and publishing is so frustrating, writers are particularly vulnerable to believing in those who offer hope in exchange for cash. Writers know life is tough and we all want to think of an easier way. Maybe for a rare few, there is. If you count on that, you are a chump and somebody is going to take your money and break your heart.” - Pat Walsh

16. “You have made some notes, read some writing books, and done some research. Mostly what you've done is talk about writing a book. An idea for a book is not a book; it is a waste of time. There is no singular thing that makes someone a writer, but there is one thing that makes someone a joke--talking about writing a book without doing any work.” - Pat Walsh

17. “You can't judge a book by it's cover but you can sure sell a bunch of books if you have a good one.” - Jayce O'Neal

18. “If the novel is dead, I'm a necrophiliac.” - Tiffany Madison

19. “Write from the heart. A book without a pulse is like a person without a spirit." Linda Radke, President of Five Star Publications” - Linda F. Radke

20. “Turning a manuscript into a book is easy; getting the manuscript ready to become a book is hard.” - A.P. Fuchs

21. “I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do---the actual act of writing---turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” - Anne Lamott

22. “It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.” - Don DeLillo

23. “It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question why they’re writing at all. To have one’s writing rejected is like you, yourself, are being rejected. ” - Lizz Clements

24. “The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.” - Michael Moorcock

25. “When content scarcity was the norm, we could live with a minimum of context. In a limited market, our editors became skilled in making decisions about what would be published. Now, in an era of abundance, editors have inherited a new and fundamentally different role: figuring out how “what is published” will be discovered.” - Hugh McGuire

26. “‎"It almost felt like the dolphin of my heart’s desire playing in the ocean of my life." - on writing” - Mariam Kobras

27. “We publish only to satisfy out craving for fame; there's no other motive except the even baser one of making money....” - Thomas Bernhard

28. “It’s always the end of the world,” said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon’s top executives. “You could set your watch on it arriving.” He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. “The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader,” he said. “Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity.” Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal. New York Times, 10/16/2011” - Russell Grandinetti

29. “Stop thinking “Outside the box” and look what is actually in the box first. You jump around from marketing gimmick to marketing gimmick without a clear plan or goal, hoping to reproduce someone else’s success without understanding all of the nuances and factors that went into that success. Further, people are so busy recreating the wheel that they have forgotten what the wheel looks like.” - Julie Ann Dawson

30. “Josephy visited several leading Manhattan bookstores and sadly discovered the explanation [from his agent] to be generally correct; books about Indians were shelved in the back of the stores alongside books about natural history, dinosaurs, plants, birds, and animals rather than being placed alongside biographies and histories of Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans, and other great world cultures. Puzzled, Josephy began asking bookstore managers for a justification of this marketing tactic and was informed that Indian books had “just always been placed there.” The longer he pondered booksellers’ indifference toward Indians, the more annoyed Josephy became with the realization that bookstore marketing tactics were simply a reflection of the pervasive thinking throughout the United States in 1961: Americans believed Indians to be a vanished people. “Thinking about it made me angry,” Josephy wrote in his autobiography, “and I vowed that someday, some way, I would do something about this ignorant insult.” - Bobby Bridger

31. “Note to the wise: whenever someone insists that he wants to buy something from you, but tells you there’s no real value in it yet, two things are happening: he’s lying, and you’re being taken.” - Michael A. Stackpole

32. “Online review sites are the slushpiles of feedback.” - S. Kelley Harrell

33. “Persistence can look a lot like stupid.” - Kristen Lamb

34. “Content is King. Promotion is Queen” - Bob Mayer

35. “I often think publishing a book is like doing a poo. Once it's ready for the world, you have to relinquish that control and let nature take its course. A few will be impressed by your creation, others will be disgusted. Plus, no one will enjoy your success and achievement in producing it as much as you did.” - H.O. Charles

36. “Publication is a marathon, not a sprint. Writing the book is only the start.” - Jo Linsdell

37. “There are three certainties in a writer's life: death, taxes, and rejection letters.” - T.L. Rese

38. “Behind every novel is a greater story of how it came to be published.” - T.L. Rese

39. “I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!” - Roman Payne

40. “Besides,” said Mr Norrell, “I really have no desire to write reviews of other people's books. Modern publications upon magic are the most pernicious things in the world, full of misinformation and wrong opinions.” “Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.” “But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people's.” “Ah, but, sir,” said Lascelles, “it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.” “Hmm,” said Mr Norrell thoughtfully, “you may be right. But, no. It would seem as if I were lending support to what ought never to have been published in the first place.” - Susanna Clarke

41. “[April Michelle Davis's motto on freelancing in the publishing industry:] Like it, love it, live it. Like your genres, love what you do, live your profession.” - April Michelle Davis

42. “When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creator's have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become a book that can be read, that no longer belongs to its maker. It has acquired, in a sense, free will. It will make its journey through the world and there is no longer anything the author can do about it. Even he, as he looks at its sentences, reads them differently now that they can be read by others. They look like different sentences. The book has gone out into the world and the world has remade it.” - Salman Rushdie

43. “I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” - Vladimir Nabokov

44. “Before Gutenberg, libraries were small -- the Cambridge University library had only 122 volumes in 1424, for instance; after Gutenberg literacy became widespread.” - Larry Stone

45. “What you have not published, you can destroy. The word once sent forth can never be recalled.” - Horace

46. “Still, to be urged to write and to be urged to publish are two different things and nobody so far was urging her to do the latter.” - Alan Bennett The Uncommon Reader

47. “If you can dream it, you can do it!” - Patricia Gligor

48. “Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.” - Dr Roopleen

49. “An author’s strong belief and enthusiasm will affect the writing of the book and often the publisher’s commitment to it.” - Sterling Lord

50. “In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.” - John Green

51. “I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good.” - Richard Curtis

52. “If you don’t put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There’s the writer and there’s the author. The author—you don’t ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care—easier said than done. Accept that the world may never notice this thing you worked so hard at. And instead, do it for it, find a job, find a way of living that gives you an hour or two or three a day to do it, and then work your ass off sending out, trying to get out there, but do not put the pressure on the work to do something for you. Because then you’re going to be writing dishonestly and for the market instead of for the characters and your story.” - Andre Dubus III

53. “Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live . . . or live for long.” - John McGahern

54. “The endorsements on books aren’t entirely impartial. Unbeknownst to the average reader, blurbs are more often than not from the writer’s best friends, colleagues or teachers, or from authors who share the same editor, publisher or agent. They represent a tangled mass of friendships, rivalries, favors traded and debts repaid, not always in good faith.” - Rachel Donadio

55. “Apparently, my hopes, dreams and aspirations were no match against my poor spelling, punctuation and grammar.” - Red Red Rover

56. “Authors today need a publisher as much as they need a tapeworm in their guts.” - Rayne Hall

57. “Contract law is essentially a defensive scorched-earth battleground where the constant question is, “if my business partner was possessed by a brain-eating monster from beyond spacetime tomorrow, what is the worst thing they could do to me?” - Charles Stross