My books have been translated into various languages and sold in other countries, but I never have any contact with the foreign publishers and am so disconnected from that process that it seems almost imaginary. With 'How to Save a Life', I worked closely with Usborne editors and have been involved in the publicity.
I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I don't think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok?
In the early '70s - a very good time for children's books and their authors - editors and publishers were willing to take a chance on a new writer. They were willing and able to invest their time in nurturing writers with promise, encouraging them.
From that moment on, the newspaper became a highly lucrative investment for those with a talent for making money or for publishers wanting to gain a fortune.
When you've finished reading every last thing by a famous writer, literary convention holds that you move on to his or her letters, the DVD extras peddled by publishers.
I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.
I don't chase publishers. Publishers chase me.
As a successful romantic novelist - one of my publishers is Mills & Boon - I create the sort of male heroes that no woman could fail to adore and few real men could hope to emulate.
My respect for artists is very high. I think to get the most out of them, you have to liberate them. I think part of liberating them is saying, 'Come up with something brilliant, new, and fresh. Stop thinking based on what has been beat into you by executives or publishers in terms of what's going to work and what's not. Don't react, just act.'
Marvel books also feed into the smaller publishers and the fact that this is happening in the same month we're launching Ultimate Fantastic Four is no coincidence.
I don't tend to do category fiction very well. One of my problems when I was starting off was that publishers were hesitant to handle my books because they were never sure what I was going to do next.
The original idea was to make it easy to publish content on the Web and find an audience. What we learned from publishers is that the thing they want the most is more readers and more revenue.
Printed books usually outlive bookstores and the publishers who brought them out. They sit around, demanding nothing, for decades. That's one of their nicest qualities - their brute persistence.
As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.
The requests for blurbs seem to come in waves. I'm not sure what precipitates them. I think it must be excruciating for editors to draft those elaborate letters asking for a blurb, and I know it's torturous for us writers to ask directly. But publishers encourage us to. Rock and a hard place.
There are a lot of global decisions that you can make as a co-publisher, and only publishers can make those kind of decisions. At the same time, there are some things you can do only as a penciler or creator. I want to keep my hands in both pots, so to speak.
The bane of my existence is the synopses that publishers request for a new novel or series. That's where I'm really producing fiction - my final book never ends up looking like the synopsis.
As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.
When I first started editing a 'Year's Best' volume in the '70s, the job was pretty straightforward - there were three or four monthly magazines to read and a few original anthologies from trade publishers every year.
Authors will make far more on those ebooks through direct sales than publishers are offering. There is no incentive for authors to sell those rights to traditional publishers which means, in the fairly short term, publishers run out of material to sell.
I've stopped reading about the death of books because it's wasteful and morbid and insulting to the authors, agents, publishers, booksellers, critics, and readers that keep the world community of fiction interesting.
Prior to 2009, when publishers scoffed at the ebook market, they offered writers contracts which gave us half of the money they made off ebook sales.
Among my books, the ones that sell best are for readers between the ages of 8 and 12. According to a study by the Association of American Publishers, the largest area of industry growth in 2014 was in the children and young adult category.
Higher ebook prices only benefit one group: publishers.
As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.
The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors - there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own.
Writers generally get into writing because they want to write, not because they want to be independent publishers, and you can't really fault someone for saying, 'What I'm doing right now works, so there's no reason to change it.'
My life has been pretty unconventional. The publishers saw a story in it, and yes, my life has been put in a book.
On the advice of my U.K. publishers, I chose a sexless anonymity and published my first five books under the semi-pseudonym, S. J. Bolton. I was happy. I could hide behind a genderless, classless persona and let my creepy, psychological murder-mysteries speak for themselves.
