What to do if your publisher declares bankruptcy.

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What to do if your publisher declares bankruptcy.

April 25, 2017July 21, 2023 411

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.

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

Mickey Spillane

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

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

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

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

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

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

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

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

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

Lawrence Wray

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

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.