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Michael Reisman is the author of the middle grade Simon Bloom series. He’s been working for over 11 years as a story analyst for various movie and TV companies.

Eddie Gamarra is a literary manager/producer for The Gotham Group.

I'm so happy that I was able to attend this breakout! It was like my own insider look at the movie industry. And that means I can't really share some of the secrets. But at the next conference, this is a session you don't want to miss!

They provided an awesome handout that described the elusive term "High Concept" as an easily-described an easily-grasped concept. Then the paper went into Suggested fate of a book/script/treatment in coverage, Movie deal scenarios and the definitions of various terms that deal with the industry.

It also had a ranking of book adaptations with their studio and lifetime gross.
And to pull it all together Michael and Eddie were like a comedy duo up there. They had the room in hysterics. Can I go again tomorrow?

Suz

Hollywood is derivative; Hollywood is redundant; Hollywood is driven by brands, Eddie says. It can still be hard to predict what will work--Alvin & the Chipmunks was a big hit; Nancy Drew was a flop. There are 20 people in Hollywood who are meaningful--20 actors, 20 writers, 20 directors--and they're very busy, Eddie says.

For TV, he says, it's a little different. TV is a character-driven and relationship-driven. When considering whether your books might work for TV, think about whether you can imagine your characters surviving for episode after episode with anything thrown at them and still remaining your characters. (At the end of every episode, Homer Simpson is always Homer Simpson, for example.)

There are three ways book writers can make money in Hollywood:

• Options: A studio has exclusive rights to make your book into a film for a specified period of time (which may or may not happen).
• Purchases: The studio owns all the rights. Writers will very rarely get any involvement in a project involving their books/characters.
• Back-end: Bonuses on box-office milestones, for example.
  

Gotham likes to think this way: If you have an idea and you think it works as a books, sell it as a book first. In Hollywood when a project is acquired, movie companies generally want all rights to everything. You can end up having a movie made from your book and books based on the movie made of your book with your characters. These deals can be really complicated.

Let's say you've sold millions of copies of a book, Eddie says, that pretty much mean nothing to Hollywood. For them, it's all about sales figures. They don't care about reviews and awards, just numbers. Foreign sales are also important--Hollywood is a worldwide business.

For film executives, what really matters is the concept. They think in terms of what will be on the poster, what's the big idea, what's the hook. These execs don't have time to read books. They read blurbs or jacket copy. So when you're thinking about whether your book has movie potential, think about whether it would translate into a movie trailer.

--POSTED BY ALICE

Gotham Group's Eddie Gamarra has worked with Libba Bray, Holly Black, Mo Willems and other great authors.

This conference, he says, is so astounding to him--he cannot fathom a gathering in Los Angeles where producers and others in the industry get up on a panel and tell writers how to break in. "It just wouldn't happen."

Eddie works as a manager. Managers, he says, think in terms of ideas and what they can do with them. They can sell both film and TV rights. They are a creator-driven company and like to work with creative people who are multi-hyphenates: writer-llustrators, actor-writer, etc.

Gotham works with screenwriters, directors, animators, publishers, comic book publishers, and they co-agent with book agents.

--POSTED BY ALICE

The latest of our SCBWI TEAM BLOG series of pre-conference interviews with Winter Conference speakers and keynoters is up on Lee Wind's blog.

Lee interviewed Eddie Gamarra, a literary manager/producer at The Gotham Group, specializing in representing works for TV, Film and Dramatic rights. He's offering three breakout sessions on THE REAL DEAL ABOUT TELEVISION AND NEW MEDIA.

Click here to read the interview with Eddie.

Click here to register for the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York City where you can see Eddie Gamarra in person.