No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I didn't think I would be an exceptional writer, and I thought I might be a useful publisher. I've never regretted it.
When there are fewer and fewer publishers of scale, it's just not good for authors.
The profession is never going back to those days when a handful of wealthy people treated publishing like a hobby: one where the business can lose money because the family has lots of it to burn. Frankly, I don't think that model was ever sustainable, and it really only enriched a small number of writers.
There's almost no author alive who isn't weathering the tumultuous changes in the publishing industry.
Publishers were ever eager for authors to do their own publicity because nobody else was willing to do it for nothing. But then it became clear that if you want somebody to champion the story, there's nobody better than the person who made it all up.
As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.
I always had good recognition from the Southern writers, but the publishers never took any notice of that.
No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.
There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.
I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'