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On discovering new authors

31 May 2004

'Most publishers seem like wallpaper. Most of them today are either promoted bookkeepers or ambitious men and women who care only for power and couldn't care less what they actually publish. If publishers don't say much, it's probably because they don't have much to say...'

And on the thrill of discovering a new author: 'That's why you get up in the morning with a bounce in your feet. You've discovered a new author you think is marvelous. It's very sexy. It feels great. It's a triumph.'

The founder and publisher of the distinguished American publishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Roger W Straus, who died last week, on publishing and what makes it special.