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"All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers."
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"We now open our mail with gloves and mask, though I can't imagine why anyone would target a literary agency!"
"Publishers like a good buzz, and negative responses sell books just as well as positive ones."
"Author's WarningIf you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don't blame me. I told you."
"The real effect of the WTC calamity has been depressed spirits, anxiety, and uncertainty among publishers, and of course those emotions are not restricted to publishers."
"The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are."
"The key factor is whether the agent is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives, which screens its members and requires them to uphold a Canon of Ethics."
"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy."
"I was publishing when I was 20, 21. And it really never stopped."
"I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets."
Explore more quotes by Donald E. Westlake
"Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me."
"The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed."
"Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder."
"A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview."
"Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote."
"I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss."
"If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers."
"When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind."
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