Quotes About Book Editors

#1. The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how 'Beyond This Dark House' appeared.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#2. In my first story, 'Mr. Mysterious & Company' ... I was asked to take out some of the humor because editors were afraid reviewers would dismiss the book as a joke. Today, humor is enjoyed and no longer regarded as literary brummagem.

Sid Fleischman

#3. On a book like 'X-Men,' you have to stay true to the established fiction, working with editors to ensure continuity, sometimes across multiple titles.

Joe Madureira

#4. I've got a folder full of rejection slips that I keep. Know why? Because those same editors are now calling my agent hoping I'll write a book or novella for them. Things change. A rejection slip today might mean a frantic call to your agent in six months.

MaryJanice Davidson

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years.

John Shelby Spong

#10. 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

#11. I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.

Billy Collins

#12. In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it's printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.

John Green

#13. It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini.

Al Silverman

#14. I have never had any problems with editors who wanted me to change my methods or point of view. I pay a lot of attention to editors, but in a different way. They sometimes catch mistakes and help with the order of poems in a book. I do not underestimate them! Indeed, I have been one myself.

Margaret Atwood

#15. For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not).

Nancy Kress

#16. 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

#17. What I eventually realized is that the real business of books is not done by awards committees or people who turn trees into paper or editors or agents or even writers. We're all just facilitators. The real business is done by readers.

John Green

#18. When I first quit my day job, I was terrified. I called my editors and said I'm trying to make a go of this, and they threw every contract at me they could. And for two years, I had a book or an anthology out every month.

MaryJanice Davidson

#19. 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

#20. Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.

John O'Hara

#21. Book publishing was never a heaven "run by editors", and it is by no means today a hell "run by accountants." If our "sole interest" was "instant profit," not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn't be in book publishing at all.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden

#22. You always want to go out there with the best book possible, so I listen to what my editors say, and even if they don't know how to fix it, I always seem to find a way. 'Trust Your Eyes' is the best book I've written, and I don't know if I can do any better.

Linwood Barclay

#23. Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.

Jane Yolen

#24. Be sure to see that the first few pages have the reader on the edge of his seat, unable to put the book down. Most editors only have time to read a few pages before making a decision; make those pages memorable!

Judith Saxton

#25. The worst part? Knowing that since a book this moving, this enthralling and enveloping comes along, as I said, only every once in a while, it will be many, many moons until we see its like again. - Sara Nelson

Amazon Books Editors

#26. 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

#27. Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

Lord Chesterfield

#28. You can write the best book you can, and that might still not be enough. Appeal isn't something that most writers can't strive for or identify. It's something even the best agents and editors can't always identify.

M.J. Rose

#29. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.

Terri Windling

#30. What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often fall into the error of reviewing the woman instead.

Fanny Fern

#31. An editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself-a good editor will make your book better.

Guy Kawasaki

#32. When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.'

Stacy Schiff

#33. 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

#34. Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.

Alexander Theroux

#35. I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.

Christopher Darden

#36. Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.

Jon Weisman

#37. If I can avoid doing freelance work, I prefer to. Not just because it takes me away from drawing comics, but also because it's just annoying having to deal with art editors, and having to read people's articles or books or whatever.

Chester Brown

#38. 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

#39. Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.

Mary Roach

#40. 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

#41. With 'California,' editors were reading it, and fast, and others were emailing my agent to request it. Ultimately, there were a few editors interested in the book, and it sold at auction about two weeks after the submission process started. I couldn't believe it!

Edan Lepucki