Quotes about publishing-and-publishers

The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.

— Raymond Chandler

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

— Cyril Connolly

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?

— Aleister Crowley

A publisher is a specialized form of bank or building society, catering for customers who cannot cope with life and are therefore forced to write about it.

— Colin Haycraft

Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.

— Ernest Hemingway

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.

— Philip Roth

Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs -- unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.

— Hunter S. Thompson

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

— Oscar Wilde