I did the first Parker novel, in which he got caught, and the editor at Pocket Books took me to lunch and said, 'Is there any way that this guy could get away at the end, and you could do three books a year for us?' And I said, 'I think so.'
I set the goal of getting a book contract by age thirty.
I got a couple of different contacts from publishing companies saying they'd be interested in a book about my work: not a kiss-and-tell book, which I specifically put in the contract. Just a book about my work and what I did.
A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.
In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.
I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.
I wrote 'Don't Look Back' in November 2011, and when I wrote the novel, it wasn't contracted, so there was a freedom in that - no expectations or anything like that. It was also my first contemporary novel I'd written and sold, which was to Disney/Hyperion in January of 2012.
After 20 years, a million written words, and nine rejected novels, I finally landed a book contract.
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.
I've come to see that these politicians that release books - no way are they actually writing those books. Not when they are working fulltime, too. There's no way. That's their name on the book, but it's not their work. I'm sure of that. There's no way.
In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book.
A new regulation for the publishing industry: "The advance for a book must be larger than the check for the lunch at which it was discussed.
Until I became a nurse, no one had ever asked me to sign a book contract. I had been writing for decades, read thousands of books, and even worked in publishing for 10 years. Who knew that nursing would be my break?
Publishing is a business. It's about squeezing every last dollar out of every available source, and the most vulnerable source is the author. No clearer proof of that exists than the 'standard' book contract.
I finished 'America America,' and I knew I had to write another book, not just for personal reasons but because I had a contract.
It used to be a lot easier to get a book deal.
I have been blessed to have the same editor and work for a great publishing house.
I would hate to be that person who is, you know, the mystery writer who has to deliver a book every year to publisher X.
In the middle of my fourth year teaching is when I got my book contract - in 2010. I knew the book would come out in May 2011.
