Book Quote by Anonymous

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough…

— Ian Rankin

The first seven years that I wrote fiction, I sent out stories and a novel and made a total of $25.

— Jess Walter

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime…

— Harlan Coben

I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.

— Naguib Mahfouz

For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.

— Anne Enright

It took me 40 years to write my first book.

— Paulo Coelho

My first published novel, 'American Rust,' took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before…

— Philipp Meyer

At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I…

— Ashwin Sanghi

I didn't write professionally at first. It took me nine years to get anything published. At the beginning I mostly wrote picture books, which…

— Gail Carson Levine

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

— Lloyd Alexander

It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.

— Rob Roberge

My wife gave me a year to start making money out of writing, and after six months, I'd made not a bean. Suddenly, the…

— Jonathan Stroud