Even more than getting compliments on social media, what I love is when some random stranger says something very funny or insightful about my books, often in 140 characters or less! It's a very casual, low-stakes, non-burdensome way of connecting that I think is fun for both the writer and the reader. And there are a lot of clever people out there who have no connection to publishing.
I've been getting publishing royalties and stuff like that. I have just been lucky. They come in at the right time. Sometimes they don't, but I am not wealthy or anything like that. I just love to work. I would rather work three hundred and something days out of the year. I would rather be working. They don't know. I love playing. Then I can really get my music together.
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. . . I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
In my long, long years toiling around the publishing industry, I've found that women simply don't stick to the writing with the same fervor that men do.
Because most writers have totally unrealistic concepts of how publishing works.
Paperbacks weren't considered real books in the book trade. Up till then it was just murder mysteries, potboilers, 25-cent pocket books sold in newsstands. When the New York publishers started publishing quality paperbacks, there was no place to buy them.
I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.
I'm very primitive in terms of economics. The kind of new business in which stock gets more valuable because the company grows, but there must be limits to growth. But if publishing is expanding to fill that retail space, it seems like there may be a necessary and unpleasant correction waiting down the road. How many books to people WANT?
Publishing requires a lot of persistence and a fair amount of luck.
All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.
I don't take investment advice from wealth managers. I have grown several businesses from scratch and amassed many millions from my publishing empire - why would I take advice from someone who has never experienced that?
Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.
Sometimes writers say true things about the overall nature of publicity, promotion, and the publishing industry; but alas, not always.
In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.
Criticism is part of being in the marketplace. If you can't take a bit of criticism, you shouldn't bother publishing a book.
Yelling is a form of publishing
The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.
Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.
With Instapaper, I can take a few months off. I can't stop publishing 'The Magazine' for two months and work on something else.
I love the good old book with glue and binding, I really do, but that is just one way of experiencing text, and suddenly we have so many new ways, including our laptops, our phones, our watches. People in my generation agonize over this. People much younger than me don't agonize at all. They just go ahead and find ways to transform publishing.