Quote

If there is going to be any meaningful sales, it's going to be through word of mouth and people recommending it to their book club and then a thousand more book clubs do it, and then you get into real sales numbers.

Books have become products, like cereal or perfume or deodorant.

The ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing - I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail.

Most of my books have caused distribution and printing problems in the past.

I think I'm more marketing- and sales-oriented than others, and the notion of selling books continues to interest me.

I think the purveyors of e-books are only too happy for this atmosphere of 'everything belongs to everybody' to increase because it means they don't have to think so much about the original maker of the thing, or they can get away with paying them less.

If the books are selling, the money will follow.

We still have pretty good sales, especially for the art books.

Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks every three to four years, in a classic cycle of planned obsolescence.

My hardcover sales are 17% down in books but up 400% in electronics.