Victoria Strauss

“When I was submitting my first novel, I had no idea that publishing scams existed. I never encountered any, but I could have - and knowing how easily I might have been taken advantage of makes me determined to protect others from falling into that trap.”

“There is an enormous shadow industry of scammers and amateurs who prey on aspiring writers, who divert people from the real publishing industry into this shadow world of vanity publishing and fee-charging agents.”

“Is it ever worthwhile to buy a review? Not in my opinion. With independent paid review services, quality can be a problem; plus, there are plenty of non-professional book review venues out there that will review for free.”

“Maybe self-publishing is going to be an extra step added to publishing. Maybe what's going to happen is you self-publish a book, someone notices it - an agent? - and it goes from there into the traditional sphere.”

“'Pay it forward' has become a hackneyed concept, but I truly believe in it, and it gives me huge satisfaction to be able to help writers in a measurable way.”

“Every famous writer was once an unknown writer. If publishers never published new writers, they wouldn't be publishing anyone at all after a while.”

“It can be hard to say if someone has a deliberate intent to defraud or if they are just really, really bad at their business. But even if people are unpublishable, it doesn't mean they should be ripped off.”

“There's a difference between publicity and marketing. A lot of writers don't realize how much marketing goes on beyond the scenes, with sales reps and advanced reading copies, all that stuff that happens months before a book is published.”

“Very wonderful books might be published, and very terrible books might be published.”

“Print-on-demand and electronic self-publishing options have made it easy for anyone to set up a business as a publisher whether they know what they're doing or not.”

“If you're going to self - publish, you need to know why you're doing it, what you want to accomplish, and how you plan to implement that.”

“This was not the perfect work that had existed in her mind. It was only the imperfect rendering that was the best her skill could manage. Yet Giulia was not dismayed. For she knew that she would try again – and again, and again, for as long as it took to gain the experience, the judgment, the understanding to get it right. And perhaps she never would get it right. Perhaps she would never attain that flawless blue, never create that perfect image, never find the ultimate point of balance between what she could accomplish an what she could dream. Yet wasn’t that the point? To be drawn onward, ever onward, in pursuit of your deepest passion? To look back at the end fo the race and knew that you had never done less than the most you could do?”