Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's so easy to look foolish online.
If your mom is still around, you're so lucky.
MWA and The Author's Guild refused to accept me as a member.
In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.
A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess.
If no one knows your book is out there, no one will think about buying it. It's as simple as that.
Sales don't always have anything to do with good or brilliant or original. Sales are about appeal.
There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.
As consumers, we are faced with hundreds of choices - and when it comes to books, thousands of choices.
I think that we need to live our lives for the present... as if it is our one and only wild and wonderful life.
One Tweet can be heard 'round the world if the right people retweet it and the right people notice it on their feeds.
The Fiction Writer's Co-op has 51 members, from celebrated NYT bestsellers to promising newcomers, and a waiting list.
If I present a boring personal life to my readers, it's going to be harder for them to think of my novels as thrilling.
I know some authors who have gotten $25,000 advances and put it all into marketing, others who allocate $5,000 or $1,000.
Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Or Pinterest. Nothing wrong with having a social presence.
'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.
With so many millions of titles available, the books that will get talked about are the books that make readers talk about them.
They say every writer really just writes about one thing over and over. I guess my one thing is how the past impacts the present.
PR and marketing doesn't sell books. It gets attention for them. It sends readers to bookstores and websites to read a few pages.
I think the most important thing we as writers can do is figure out how we define what success will mean to us and focus on that.
Save yourself some grief. Check with the publicist you hire to see what other books he/she has coming out at the same time as yours.
I'm realistic about my career as a novelist. I'm certainly not a superstar and far, far from a household name, but I feel successful.
A comprehensive marketing plan involves both online and offline efforts to use and broaden your existing platform to promote your book.
As a self-published author, you have the choice. Embrace the power to create a book that is truly yours. Don't be a whiner or a copycat.
All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it.
In my novels, there are twelve ancient 'memory tools,' all now lost. Each of the 'Reincarnationist' books revolves around a different tool.
I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.
The marketability, the success of a book, ultimately rests with whether or not people will find the concept/characters/title/cover appealing.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking our careers will come to a standstill, or worse, crash and burn if we aren't social media butterflies.
Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.
There was an ingredient used in perfumes and remedies in the Middle Ages called 'momie' that is certainly one of the most fascinating I've come across.
I grew up in New York and have lived here all my life. I think it's the best city in the world and can write about it with gusto and fervor and passion.
Do send out a newsletter when you have a new book out or are going on tour. Also list relevant event dates and notifications of contests you are running.
Ask your editor or ask your agent to find out what the house's goals are for your book before it comes out. Get some sense of expectations so you are prepared.
Don't use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson's cellar instead of investing in your book.
From 1999 on - until 2003 - I covered publishing in a weekly column for Wired.com and wrote for several other publications - altogether writing over 150 articles.
From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising.
Vera Caspary wrote thrillers - but not like any other author of her time, male or female. Her specialty was a specific type that she pioneered - the psycho thriller.
The one thing I am now sure of is that if there is such a thing as destiny, it is a result of our passion, be that for money, power, or love. Passion, for better or worse.
I might have created the phrase 'memory tools', but people have always found talismans to help them meditate into a state of hypnosis where they can access their past lives.
Paris is an unsolved puzzle. She inspires me in a way that other places don't. And she demands more of me. Just try to write about her without bumping into cliche after cliche.
I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes.
I always miss my mom. Mother's Day would be just one more day I'd feel her absence but for the relentless commercialization. Thanks to that, this day is even harder to deal with.
Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books.
Books on their own aren't insanely expensive compared to other things; three large cappuccinos cost more than a paperback, and two and a half gallons of gas cost more than a paperback.
I grew up in New York, and for the first ten years of my life, we lived across from the Metropolitan Museum. When I was an adult, I moved back to that neighborhood and lived there again.
The most satisfying thrillers send ordinary people into battle against the forces of evil - otherwise known as greed, ego, rage, fear and laziness - and bring them out bloodied but whole.
I thought if I put my book up on the Internet as a file that you could download, and I told people about it, maybe some people would download it and read it, and maybe I could get some response.
It's been more than a decade since I put that self-published novel, 'Lip Service', up on a website. Since then, many hundreds of authors have gone from self-published to traditionally published.
Ask your agent to set up a meeting with either your editor or the marketing department of the house or both so you can find out what they're doing, what they aren't, and what you can do to help.