What to do if your publisher declares bankruptcy.

Blog

What to do if your publisher declares bankruptcy.

April 25, 2017July 21, 2023 410

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.

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

Joseph Conrad

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

C. J. Cherryh

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

E. B. White

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

Tom Clancy

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

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

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

Romulus Linney

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

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

Matthew Arnold

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

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

Thomas Wolfe

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

Jeanette Walls

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

Truman Capote

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

Stephen Wright

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

Steven Bochco

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.