Top 59 Book Editor Quotes
#1. I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.
Karen Thompson Walker
#2. I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it.
Chuck Klosterman
#3. I've been a children's book editor, a nanny, a camp counselor, a barista, a research lab assistant, and a movie theater ticket-taker.
Lisa Graff
#4. A good editor fixes. A superb editor fixes without ruining the original message of your book as a superb translator does as well.
B.A. Gabrielle
#5. I lived through a classic publishing story. My editor was fired a month before the book came out. The editor who took it over already had a full plate. It was never advertised. We didn't get reviewed in any major outlets.
Anita Diament
#6. Hook your editor with a strong opening sentence to bring attention to your writing.
W. Terry Whalin
#7. Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#8. Writing blog posts is totally freeing in a whole new way for me. I'm not writing it for any editor, and I'm not being paid, so I can say whatever I want. I don't have to justify the cost of a book to readers; they get it for free, so expectations are naturally low. (And no one-star reviews!)
Kate Christensen
#9. You are the storyteller and the editor of your book of life. So write tales of imagination, tragedy, and adventure and illustrate it with the colors of beauty.
Debasish Mridha
#10. Never buy an editor or publisher a lunch or a drink until he has bought an article, story or book from you. This rule is absolute and may be broken only at your peril.
John Creasey
#11. I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.
Dave Eggers
#12. As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.
David Bergen
#13. [Writing] books is really fun because your "voice" is pretty undiluted. There is a very direct connection between yourself and your audience. You will have an editor, but their job is to help you clarify or improve your voice, not change it.
Liz Tuccillo
#14. As my editor had no desire to frighten readers with the Romanian pages, he had them translated and published the whole thing in French in 1984. It was only years later, in Romania, that I was able to publish the book as I wrote it.
Dumitru Tepeneag
#15. I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.
Wendell Pierce
#16. In the very existence of this book we have a most concrete example of the manner in which at least one of these marvellous creatures [cats], acquiring both an editor and a publisher, has advanced the eventual complete feline take-over of the human race.
Paul Gallico
#17. Religion embarrasses the commentators. It is offbounds. An editor of the old Life magazine once assigned me a book on religion with remark that I was the only 'religious nut' - his term for a believer - in his stable of regular reviewers.
Garry Wills
#18. A specific editor in a specific place likes the book, and you're in. A different editor on a different day goes, 'Oh, this isn't for me', or doesn't even look at it, and that's it.
Adrian McKinty
#19. The main thing is that you have a good editor - one that believes in you and who will give you the feedback that you need to produce a good book.
Christopher Darden
#20. I know from an editor's point of view or a publisher's point of view it's easier to slot me into a particular niche. But I know that I'd be bored unless I wrote a book that in some senses was a challenge.
Vikram Seth
#21. One rule of the road not directly stated elsewhere in this book: 'The editor is always right.' The corollary is that no writer will take all of his or her editor's advice; for all have sinned and fallen short of editorial perfection.
Stephen King
#22. I was incredibly determined - I wrote short stories, I wrote the beginnings of novels. I wrote a little children's book and sent it to the editor-in-chief of the children's division of Simon and Schuster and she asked me to write a little children's book for a series she was doing.
Candace Bushnell
#23. The reason I was successful in launching my first book with bloggers is this: I assumed that I should spend as much time on a blogger with a million-person readership as I would pitching an editor of a publication with a million person subscription-base.
Timothy Ferriss
#24. I have SO many books I didn't sell. Some my agent rejected outright, others made it all the way to my editor to be turned away. Not everything is a winner, which is tough when you've devoted eight or nine months of your life to something.
Sarah Dessen
#26. It was not until I began to write a book called 'Light Years' that an editor really stepped in. The editor was Joe Fox at Random House, and he wound up editing a subsequent book.
James Salter
#27. Tell the story that's in your heart. Write for your own pleasure, not anyone else's. Then, if and when you're ready, find a reputable editor who will be honest with you about the quality of your book and your chances of publication. But never, ever, stop enjoying writing or you will be lost
Jane Cable
#28. I cried most days working on the first draft. The last scenes were the hardest. I had a feeling where I wanted to end - the exact note - but I couldn't see how to get there. Sarah Murphy, my editor, asked the right questions to help me. I think of 'The Bear' as a hopeful book.
Claire Cameron
#29. One of the things I like about publishing is that you don't promote the editor - you promote the book and the author.
Jackie Kennedy
#30. (I must note that the copy editor for this book, upon reading this section, actually allowed me to use singular they throughout the book. Here's to them in awed gratitude!)
John McWhorter
#31. It generally takes me about nine months from the point the book is conceived to the point my editor sends it off to be typeset.
Julia London
#32. We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something ... because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed.
Chris Anderson
#33. I'm so used to being separate from the publication process. I turn in the book to the editor and then I'm done.
Hilary Liftin
#34. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#35. I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.
Kristin Cast
#36. I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, 'Judy, we need a title.'
Judy Blume
#37. An editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself-a good editor will make your book better.
Guy Kawasaki
#38. I heard a story the other night about an editor who visited the Iowa Workshop and, when asked what sorts of books she published, replied, "Classic books." One of the students asked her, "You mean like Kafka?" Apparently she said, "Oh, I don't think I would publish Kafka."
Matthew Specktor
#39. I have an idea for a new book. It's a novel about a beautiful yet sensitive author whose spirit is crushed by her domineering editor. Do you like it?
Annie Barrows
#40. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#41. A book is never, ever finished. You simply get to a point where you and your editor are reasonably happy with how it is and you go with that. Left to our own devices, a writer would endlessly fiddle with a book, changing little thing after little thing.
Kimberly Pauley
#42. I couldn't decide on a title for my first novel and my editor came up with Everything Good Will Come. After that, I thought I should name my own books.A Bit of Difference seems just right.
Sefi Atta
#43. Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.
Chuck Klosterman
#44. The Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.
Jasper Fforde
#45. Ask your editor or ask your agent to find out what the house's goals are for your book before it comes out. Get some sense of expectations so you are prepared.
M.J. Rose
#46. Soap wasn't invented until the Romans, who also invented interesting sex. (Since my editor informs me that a gardening book is not a proper venue for discussions of interesting sex, I will go into this topic in more detail when I write my private memoirs, 'A Petunia Named Desire').
Cassandra Danz
#47. Bob Harras' personal and creative integrity is respected and renowned throughout the comic book industry. As an editor, he provides invaluable insight into storytelling and character.
Jim Lee
#48. I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff.
Jane Smiley
#49. [My mom] is quite the strict editor. I feel like maybe she has more of the old-school editing style, which really works in picture books, because you don't want to articulate anything in words that is already shown through the pictures.
Jenna Bush
#50. While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.
Jerry B. Jenkins
#51. One thing I have noticed is that when you're a younger editor, you're more intense about it. As you go along, you relax a little. More and more, I feel that the book is the author's. You give the author your thoughts, and it's up to him or her to decide what to do.
Jonathan Galassi
#52. My wife and I, we work together. And we wrote this book, "Dad Is Fat." And in the book, I was encouraged constantly by my editor to be more personal and talk about more personal experiences.
Jim Gaffigan
#53. An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.
Gudjon Bergmann
#54. This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.
Mark Twain
#55. It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.
Louise Brown
#57. If you want to write a book that's very successful and famous, then it's hard. If you just want to get published, all you have to do is convince an editor that your idea will make them money.
Kate Cary
#58. My toughest criticism usually comes from myself. As my editor can attest to, I'm never done tweaking a book until the production department has to rip it from my hands!
Kresley Cole
#59. On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' ... Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.
William Safire
