The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut

“ ‘The Last of the Mastodons’ is an erotic drug-fueled dramedy,” said one.

Others began with such perplexing premises that it was hard to concentrate: Some aspiring authors described their books like auctioneers: in a single, panicked breath. Most of the pitches were polished and quick to the punch. We heard about assassinated Saudi princes and gay ministers and the magic of pancakes.

“Drop the ‘toll collector,’ ” the judges recommended. The next writer announced, “I’m an unemployed toll collector and a historian.” “Dog books, they sell,” observed Johnson, the Penguin rep. He’s done hundreds of television commercials and published 13 books, including his most recent, the subtly titled “ Confessions of a Sex Maniac.” (“If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James Ellroy had a three-way,” the publisher claims, “this would be their bastard child.”)Īnother woman came to the mic and said, “With a nod to Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven,’ this is a story about a pug.” With a full head of scruffy gray hair and blazing eyes, he could sell sand on a beach. “That’s going to get you on ‘Good Morning America,’ ” Sterry predicted with his signature enthusiasm. “Think Betty White meets John Belushi,” she said.

The first contestant wanted to ghostwrite her mother’s memoir, “Paid to Party,” the story of an out-of-work housewife who takes a job in a frat house. Thrillers, autobiographies, self-help, medical mysteries, political espionage - the evening was a card catalogue of sure-fire bestsellers. One by one, the hopeful scribblers came to the mike and poured as much writerly persuasion as they could into 60 seconds, and not a second more. The Book Doctors, as they call themselves, are the authors of “ The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published,” which instantly sold out at Politics and Prose.Īnyone who bought (or ordered) a copy might be one of the 20 people - chosen at random - to make a one-minute pitch to the Book Doctors along with local guest judges Joe Johnson, a sales rep for Penguin, and Gail Ross, a literary agent who counts several Washington Post reporters and editors among her clients. They’d come for Pitchapalooza! - “The American Idol for Books” conducted by husband and wife team Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. Usually a venue for best-selling authors, the Washington bookstore was filled instead with would-be novelists, expectant memoirists and unpublished writers of all kinds. “The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published,” by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry.

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut