What 7 Authors Say About Getting Published

To many of us writers, our eyes light up when we even think about the possibility of becoming a published author. It gives some of us an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and a victory over a battle of a creative mind that finally allowed the writer to express that creativity as only he or she could. Here are a few quotes about getting published from a few famous authors…

“I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” ― Anne Lamott

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” ― Vladimir Nabokov

“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.” ― Margaret Atwood

“I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.”― George Bernard Shaw

“As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the T&A magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me.” ― Stephen King

“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

“Once in every few publishing seasons, there is an Event. For no apparent reason, the great heart of the Public gives a startled jump, and the public’s great purse is emptied to secure copies of some novel which has stolen into the world without advance advertising and whose only claim to recognition is that The Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette has stated in a two-line review that it is ‘readable’.” ― P.G. Wodehouse