Self-publishing authors are rocking Hollywood!

22 May, 2017

How do you get known? Consider the example of e-book author Mark Dawson. His first novel sold poorly until Amazon suggested that he offer it for free. BOOM! Fifty thousand downloads in one weekend. That built name recognition and an audience for the second e-book. Pretty neat strategy, eh? The resulting name recognition led to a TV series deal. Read all about it at The Guardian.

Self-publishing authors are rocking Hollywood!

May 22, 2017June 6, 2026

How do you get known? Consider the example of e-book author Mark Dawson. His first novel sold poorly until Amazon suggested that he Read More...

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Roald Dahl

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

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

Edward Albee

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Mickey Spillane

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

William Shawn

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

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

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

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

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

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

E. B. White

A writer is a world trapped in a person.