The Power of How Stories Change The World with Ken Atchity

The Write Mindset | Thomas J. Bellezza

With fifty years’ experience in the publishing world and thirty-five years in entertainment, Dr. Ken Atchity is a self-labeled “Story Merchant” author, professor, producer, career coach, teacher, and literary manager, responsible for launching dozens of books and films.

Dealing with your Type-C Creative Mind – ⁠ Perseverance

For all storytellers—novelists, screenwriters, journalists, nonfiction writers, and children’s book writers.⁠

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Learn more about One-on-one coaching to help understand a Type-C personality and equip you with practical tools to make yourself more productive and less frustrated with storytelling.⁠

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Learn more: http://www.thewriterslifeline.com/

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2009 NEW YORK BOOK FESTIVAL RETURNS TO ALGONQUIN HOTEL

The 2009 New York Book Festival will again hold its annual awards celebrating books worthy of further recognition from the world's publishing capital on Friday, June 5 at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan.

Entrants to the festival competition are eligible to attend the awards ceremony.

The 2009 New York Book Festival will consider large publisher, self-published and independent publisher non-fiction, fiction, children's books, teenage, how-to, audio/spoken word, comics/zines, e-books, poetry, wild card (anything goes!), unpublished stories, science fiction, horror, photography/art, romance and biography/autobiography works.

A panel of judges will determine the winners based on the following criteria:

1) The story-telling ability of the author.

2) The potential of the work to win wider recognition.

Entries can be in English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French or Italian and must be published on or after January 1, 2001. Our grand prize for the 2009 New York Book Festival Author of the Year is $1500 and a flight to New York for the awards and our day festival on June 5-6, 2009.

TO ENTER: Click on the "ENTER THE COMPETITION" link at www.newyorkbookfestival.com and follow the directions to get an entry form. Forms may also be faxed/e-mailed to you by e-mailing us at NewYorkBookFest@aol.com. Applications must be accompanied by a non-refundable entry fee via check, money order, credit card payment or PayPal online payment of $50 in U.S. dollars for each submission. Multiple submissions are permitted but each entry must be accompanied by a separate form and entry fee.

The 2009 New York Book Festival is produced by JM Northern Media LLC, producers of the Hollywood Book Festival, DIY Convention, Beach Book Festival and New England Book Festival, and is sponsored by the Larimar St. Croix Writers Colony, eDivvy, Westside Websites and Shopanista.

Attention Screenwriters, Storytellers, and Writers

“My approach was to find good writers that didn’t necessarily have the most commercial instincts and marry them to my commercial instinct by giving them ideas and working together with them on scripts.”—Neil Moritz, Produced By

It was delightful to run across this quote from producer Neil Moritz (“Cruel Intentions,” “Fast & Furious,” “Made of Honor”), which reinforces the approach we’ve been focusing on at AEI. It’s as frustrating to us as managers as it is to our storytelling clients that good-to-excellent stories have such a hard time making their way into the marketplace. When we can convince our writers to take the marketplace seriously, we hook them up with concepts we know are low-resistance to buyers. At the very worst, this approach gets our clients’ work in front of the buyers so they can appreciate excellent writing and storytelling ability. At best, it leads to sales and financing progress.

Whether you’re a client of ours or not, think high concept. Think how you can make a buyer look at your project out of all the others that are raining down on the desk every day. One way we highly recommend: find a classic that is in public domain (so there are no rights issues). ADAPT it to today. On your title page, put, “Based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky,” or “Based on the short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.” It’s hard for editors and creative execs to resist a story that retells a classic. It’s what they call

a “pre-sold” concept.

If you’re a screenwriter with a fantastic script, consider writing it as a novel, then sell it to a publisher. It then becomes an “underlying right,” which gives the studio exec the incentive and security needed to acquire it.

Think outside the box!