The author is at one end of the experience of writing and…

I signed my first book contract without paying much attention to what it said. I didn't know at the time that the book would…

— Stephanie Land

I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending…

— Donna Leon

I wouldn't write any kind of book without a contract and an advance. You can't invest that amount of time and effort without one.

— Harrison Salisbury

I'm not a writer who thinks about writing only for themselves; I do always have a reader in mind.

— Emma Healey

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

— Jon Krakauer

“The best thing about writing is the reader”

— Girish Kohli

Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic…

— Margaret Mahy

I like to be happy when I'm writing. If not, then how will the reader manage?

— Kevin Barry

After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the…

— Jasper Fforde

These days, most of my interactions with young people are centered on the poetry or theater classes I teach, so the students I know…

— Renee Watson

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to…

— Neil Gaiman

When you write your first book, you're writing in a vacuum; it doesn't matter how much time it takes. And then with the second…

— Sabaa Tahir

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…

— Thomas Hauser

I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess…

— Ben Fountain

I set the goal of getting a book contract by age thirty.

— Karin Slaughter