This is from a reading I did at Litquake, in Vesuvio’s, the historic North Beach literary watering hole.

2 Pitchapaloozas in 24 hours. 3,000 miles apart.  They said it couldn’t be done.  They were wrong.

It all started on a beautiful Virginia Saturday afternoon at the James River Writers Conference, in the shockingly excellent city of Richmond.  JRWC came into our lives as the result of brutal failure.  Two years ago I set up a DC area mini-tour for an infamous book I put together.  My girl Shawna Kenney (whose memoir I Was a Teenage Dominatrix–which is about when she was a teenage dominatrix) was just optioned by Vince Vaughn) booked us into Poets & Busboys in Washington (packed to the rafters!), Atomic Books in Baltimore (filled to the gills!), and Chop Suey in Richmond.  When Shawna and I walked into Chop Suey, there were exactly 0 customers in the store.  There were

Calling Lake Placid authors: come pitch your book to the Book Doctors this Saturday @ The Bookstore Plus http://www.thebookstoreplus.com/event/pitchapalooza

Vermont writers: come pitch your books to the Book Doctors this Sunday @ Flying Pig Bookstore http://site.booksite.com/7087/events/?&list=EVC1&group=current&preview=1

Genn Albin’s Story of How She Got a Six-Figure, 3-Book Deal After Winning Pitchapalooza: Part 2
Our fabulous Kansas City Pitchapalooza winner, Genn Albin give us part 2 of 4 of her journey to a six-figure deal for a YA dystopian fantasy novel, Crewel:
http://bit.ly/qNZbkb

After suffering torturous abuse, inmates enter third week of hunger strike. It’s our obligation as Americans to speak out and let our government know we won’t stand for this.

This is a fantastic success story. When we went to do our Pitchapalooza at Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, little did we know that our winner would end up with a three book deal with Farrar Strauss Children’s. But Genn Albin’s truly awesome pitch for her dystopian novel Crewel just blew us away. Here’s the first of three pieces she has written for us about how the whole thing came down. Thank you, Genn, you are truly an inspiration. And we’ll be watching and reading about your journey from talented amateur to (knock wood) best-selling author.

Trailer

PITCHAPALOOZA

Pitchapalooza is American Idol for books (only without Simon). Twenty writers will be selected at random to pitch their book. Each writer gets one minute—and only one minute! In the last month, three writers have gotten publishing deals as a result of participating in Pitchapalooza. Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry are co-founders of The Book Doctors, a company dedicated to helping authors get their books published. They are also co-authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, 2010). Arielle Eckstut has been a literary agent for 18 years at The Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. She is also the author of seven books and the co-founder of the iconic brand, LittleMissMatched. David Henry Sterry is the best-selling author of 12 books, on a wide variety of subject including memoir, sports, YA fiction and reference. They have taught their workshop on how to get published everywhere from Stanford University to Smith College. They have appeared everywhere from The New York Times to NPR’s Morning Edition to USA Today.

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED by Arielle Eckstut & David Henry Sterry

Here is another book from my pile of how-to books on self-publishing. THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry covers just about everything you need to know about the Wild West World of publishing today. Earlier this year, I reviewed Dan Poynter’s classic book about self-publishing and praised it to the skies. The only shortcoming with that book was that it focused on publishing an actual physical book. In a way, this book takes up from where Dan Poynter left off. In addition to the usual advice about how to get an agent, and how to publish a softcover book, this book also looks at e-book and social media.

I am very excited to be included in this new anthology put together by my good friends Shawna Kenney and Cara Bruce. There’s lots of great writing in it, I highly recommend it to anyone with a pulse. My story is about getting arrested in a pornographic emporium.

Here are the details:

Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost | Pinchback Press
www.pinchbackpress.com

Very nice article by Andrea Pyros

http://blog.deals.com/learn-it/publish-your-novel.html?ajax=1

http://lit.newcity.com/category/news/lit-events/
Pictures of our two winners Margo Gremmler & Adam Sleper

“John, we all like climax,” David Henry Sterry instructs one of the twenty Pitchapalooza contestants at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest. “We wanna feel like we should smoke a cigarette when we’re done.” The issue of climax joins comp books, language that reflects the narrative and indicating the arc of the story as recommendations from the panel of judges on how to perfect a story pitch. Sheltered from a thunderous storm by the white festival tent, Arielle Eckstut and guest judge Joe Durepos sit to Sterry’s left as they regard the contestants one-by-one as they present their book pitches behind a podium. “Show us your writing chops,” Sterry directs to another aspiring novelist.

The Book Doctors, aka, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, will be making house calls all over the Bay Area, from Marin to Berkeley to SF to Stanford to Santa Cruz. They want YOU to pitch your book at their acclaimed event, Pitchapalooza, which was recently featured in The New York Times, and in a mini-documentary for Newsday, and on NBC. Pitchapalooza is like American Idol for books–only without the Simon. Writers get one minute to pitch their book ideas to an all-star panel of publishing experts. The winner receives an introduction to an appropriate agent or publisher for his/her book. Plus, anyone who buys a book gets a free consultation worth $100.

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Characters-stories-see-the-light-of-day-1380012.php

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http://www.thebookdoctors.com/the-book-doctors-albanytroy-pitchapalooza-boffo

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Awesome Pitchapalooza at Bookends in Ridgewood New Jersey, amazing pitches, great people, fun-omenal owners/staff. Co-winners pictured, one is 12 years old. Workshop on May 15, the mysteries of publishing will be unraveled, secrets revealed, doors unlocked.

Pitchapalooza Comes to Ridgewood
Book Ends, April 20, 7-9 PM

The Book Doctors, aka, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, will be making a house call in Ridgewood, New Jersey at Book Ends, April 20, 7 PM. They want YOU to pitch your book at their acclaimed event, Pitchapalooza, which was recently featured in The New York Times. Pitchapalooza is like American Idol for books–only without the Simon. Writers get one minute to pitch their book ideas to an all-star panel of publishing experts, including Bob Miller, Group Publisher of Workman. The winner receives an introduction to an appropriate agent or publisher for his/her book. Plus, anyone who buys a book gets a free consultation worth $100.

Johns, Marks, Tricks, & Chickenhawks is a collection of mini-memoirs, rants, confessions, dreams, nightmares, and writing by people who’ve exchanged sex for money. This book will build on the momentum and capitalize on the controversy created by the 2009 release of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, a groundbreaking anthology that appeared up on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. It will again provide unprecedented access into the lives of sex industry workers and allow this underrepresented population to tell their own stories in their own words. In this collection, hos, hookers, call girls, and rent boys examine the tragic, humorous, and incredibly complicated relationships they have with their clients. These include captains of industry and little old Jewish men, lunatics masquerading as cops and bereaved widows, judges and junkies, who spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year buying sex. It will shed light on these relationships, which have been mythologized, trivialized and grotesquely misunderstood by countless Pretty Woman-style movies for decades in books, movies and media . Johns, Marks, Tricks, & Chickenhawks will show the reader the reality behind these complex interactions, which are unfettered by the bonds of polite society, where customers are free to be who they really are: frightening, frightened, tough, and tender, confused, in love, lonely, and even empowered.

Our own Herb Schaffner displaying his big brain and sharing some big love for The Essential Guide.

For Link on Herb Schaffner click here:

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“A must-have for every aspiring writer.” – Khaled Hosseini, New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published
http://www.thebookdoctors.com/

www.davidhenrysterry.com
@sterryhead 4 twttification
http://www.facebook.com/TheBookDoctors 4 facebookization

We were lucky enough to be interviewed by a truly funny and gracious human being who works for NBC. Contradiction in terms? Apparently not. His name is Ben Aaron, and he was very very good to us.

Facebook Video

“A must-have for every aspiring writer.” – Khaled Hosseini, New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published
http://www.thebookdoctors.com/

www.davidhenrysterry.com
@sterryhead 4 twttification
http://www.facebook.com/TheBookDoctors 4 facebookization