Rachelle Gardner

We’ve spent this week going over a few Hollywood truisms that can help writers. So now it’s your turn. As a writer, what have you learned from watching movies and television? Share your best tips… and have a great weekend! © 2011 Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent

Advice from Hollywood, part 4 Since it’s Hollywood Week, it’s only fitting that we have a lesson from American Idol’s Hollywood auditions. Just last night, Idol’s field was down to 61 performers and by the end of the show it was going to be cut to 24. The contestants’ biggest worry wasn’t their own performance…

Advice from Hollywood, part 3 In real life, it’s not what a person says that shows us who they are. It’s what they do. The content of a person’s character is revealed in action and behavior. Who a person says they are, or thinks they are, doesn’t necessarily reflect their true character. In screenwriting, the…

Advice from Hollywood, part 2 Here’s another little tidbit from my former Hollywood life. I used to be a part-time “reader” meaning I read screenplays and wrote “coverage” for the production company to help them make decisions about which scripts to pursue. You have to audition to become a reader for a production company, and I was looking…

Advice from Hollywood, part 1 Back in the early ‘90s I was an L.A. girl working in television and writing screenplays on the side. Every single Saturday morning our screenwriting group would meet at my home (50 feet off the beach—it was a rough life) and critique our weekly ten pages in excruciating detail. We took…

If you have some laundry to fold, or shoes to shine, or possibly some pencils to sharpen… whatever busy work you need to do this weekend, set your laptop next to you and play this video. It’s totally worth it. At the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, amidst techies and marketing people and CEOs, Margaret…

Katie asked: I was wondering, what if I get an agent and she tries to sell two or three of my novels, all in the same genre, and nothing sells. What would happen in this case? Well Katie, sounds like you and your agent will be at a crossroads and need to make some decisions.…

(or…Get Your Info From Knowledgeable Sources) A client wrote me sounding a teeny bit worried: A friend of mine who used to be a bookstore manager mentioned the “X” that shows up after my ISBN number. She said it might be a problem when ordering books for the store because it indicated my book was…

It seems like every week there’s a new story of an author having terrific success with self-publishing. (Two examples from just this week: Amanda Hocking and Alisa Valdes.) I’ve had quite of few readers comment that they’ve gone the self-pub route, and many authors who’ve been published traditionally now have out-of-print books they’re selling via…

Richard wrote:Could you explain “remaindering” in a future post? I wish I could recall the poem I’ve heard Jim Bell quote that begins, “The book of mine enemy has been remaindered, and I am glad.” “Remainder” means that the publisher has too much stock of a book, so they sell it off at a very…

(and Returns) Today I want to explain some publishing terms that sometimes get confused: sell-in, sell-through and earn-out (and I’m reluctantly throwing in returns at the last minute.) SELL IN: This is the number of copies ordered by retailers (or any other entity) prior to publication of the book. Sometimes this number is called the…

I’m taking the day off for some good old fashioned Rocky Mountain skiing. Ever notice how it’s sometimes so much work to have fun? Sheesh, just getting the gear together, including enough clothing to keep us warm in single-digit temps, can be enough to scare us off sometimes. Then there’s the 2-hour drive. The expensive…

John said…Do you welcome queries from England in the same way as you would from America? I welcome fiction queries from everywhere. Non-fiction is tougher, because most non-fiction books are more dependent on the author being able to promote the book here in the US, but if I loved the book I wouldn’t say no…

Last Wednesday I received an email containing three brief sentences saying that the writer was inquiring about my services, wanted help, and would not tell me anything else until I responded. I set the email aside thinking that later when I had time, I’d respond with a link to my blog and website, and some…