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, 2017May 9, 2025

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...

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

E. B. White

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

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

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

William Shawn

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

Stephen King

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Thomas Jefferson

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

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

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

Jim Morrison

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

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 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

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

C. J. Cherryh

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