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...

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

Stephen King

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

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

Roald Dahl

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

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

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

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

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

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

Edward Albee

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

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

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.