Christina Baker Kline Quotes

There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.

Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I could quit my job as a journalist. Turns out it was closer to 10 books. It also turns out that while it's great to see my titles on bookstore shelves, my best customers are schools and libraries.

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

No one was interested in picking up a midlist series, even though I have a decent fanbase and respectable numbers.

To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution.

While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.

Ages ago, when I published 'Amelia's Notebook,' I'd sent it to traditional publishers I'd been working with, but nobody knew what to do with it. Tricycle was this small publisher who didn't know any better, and they took a chance.

Sadly, I don't think books ever sell based on your name alone - the minute we make an assumption like that is the minute it all goes horribly wrong!

I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books.

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

My editor picked out the name she wanted. I was either going to be Kim Harrison or Lisa Harrison, because she wanted me shelved right next to Hamilton.

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.

The moment I said I'd finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who'd got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I'd written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

In my ideal world, my next novel would have a first printing of, say, 2,500 hardcovers for reviewers, libraries, collectors, and autograph hounds. The publisher could print more copies if they get low. And simultaneously, or six weeks later, the book would be available in paperback.

The business model - where books can be returned, and where a 50% sell-through is considered acceptable - is archaic and wasteful. Writers get small royalties, little say in how their books are marketed and sold, and simple things like cover and title approval are unheard of unless you're a huge bestseller.

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

My self-publishing adventure led to my work being picked up by a traditional publisher and eventually hitting the bestseller lists. That led to two more bestselling novels.

It's hard selling books in general: companies are merging, editors being laid off, bricks-and-mortar bookstores closing, large chain bookstores squeezing out independents, and online retailers squeezing out chain bookstores.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

With the big publishers, they publish 50 books and promote five.

When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money.