What to do if your publisher declares bankruptcy.

25 Apr, 2017

Janet Reid is a literary agent and she has a blog. It seems that many publishers, traditional as well as publish-on-demand, are declaring bankruptcy. Ms. Reid wrote this article on what an author ought to do to protect him- or herself in such an eventuality. It's worth reading. It would be a good idea to read it before you go looking for a publisher.

What to do if your publisher declares bankruptcy.

April 25, 2017May 9, 2025

Janet Reid is a literary agent and she has a blog. It seems that many publishers, traditional as well as publish-on-demand, are Read More...

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.