Many people have been asking about how the book trilogy STARCROSSED by Josephine Angelini (http://budurl.com/yatrilogy) happened; and it really is an incredible story.
It’s a story of fate, Facebook, and knowing the right people to work with on a project.
A couple months ago I received a Facebook email from someone I didn’t know telling me his friend had written a book and it was really good.
I don’t usually say yes to blind queries but something about this one got my attention. I agreed to read the book and then sat on the manuscript for a week. However, one day my lunch canceled and I decided to read a chapter.
The one chapter turned into another, which turned into the first 50 pages, which turned into me not doing any of my work for the rest of the day and instead reading this amazing book that had fallen into my lap.
(In fact, my business partner spent the day asking me what I was doing since it was so unlike me to sit quietly in a corner.)
The next day I called book agent Mollie Glick at Foundry Literary & Media and said I had a book for her. Mollie and I had been looking for a project to work on together and this seemed like just the thing.
She told me she would read it in a week. However, the next day she called me to say she had read a chapter and couldn’t put the book down. She was going to stay up all night to finish it if she had too; which she did. And she loved it just as much as I did.
Then I met Josie (Josephine Angelini, the author) and we instantly connected. It turns out she was even close to a friend of mine from NYU!
Everything next happened very quickly. We spent a week doing some minor editing. Mollie then took the book into HarperTeen, where the editors fell in love with it as well. They took the book “off the table” (which means before other publishers could bid on it) for seven figures for the book rights for just the U.S. and Canada. Mollie then sold Brazil, Russia, Poland, France, Turkey, Israel, Italy, UK, Germany, Spain and Catalon — with more territories still coming in.
With all the foreign territories going so quickly we have a very good feeling that this book, along with the other two books in the trilogy, is going to be a huge international blockbuster.
It all goes to show you that sometimes success is luck plus using all your connections to reach out to everyone you know plus writing the best book in the world so that executives with busy schedules and phones ringing off the hook will be so entranced that they will stop whatever they are doing to read your material.
(And if you want to get more insider knowledge on using your connections or writing the best piece of material – check out these insider reports: http://www.showmethescreenplay.com/special-reports-entertainment-industry-insiders/ )
P.S. The best part of the story is that the guy who Facebooked me turned out to be Josie’s husband. He just didn’t want to tell me as he thought I would be biased against reading the manuscript. Very smart strategy on his part!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
an amazing story!
The dream is still alive. Thanks for the inside scoop!
My spouse and I truly think that this informative article is quite striking. I’m convinced that the following aphorism will appeal to your interest. – “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
That’s a great quote Antonio! And glad you liked the article! Best,
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