Pitch Perfect: Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch: Eddie Gamarra

Eddie Gamarra is a native New Yorker who’s been in the entertainment industry since the days of VHS (minus a brief career interlude into psychoanalysis and professordom). At Gotham Group he repped not only authors and artists, but publishers of all sizes, selling books on their behalf to the Hollywood market. In another role at Gotham he also sold books TO publishers as well as did a bit of bookpackaging. Today Eddie is VP, literary affairs, for Paramount Global’s Kids & Family Studio bookscouting for Nickelodeon and Awesomeness, so Eddie’s pitch advice today to writers and artists will cover a lot of ground awesomenessly.

Pitching has become more a part of children’s book publishing in the last decade or so, a culture change that’s led to new types of stories being sold as well as the increasing visibility social media allows to elevate new author and artist voices in online pitching events.

When we think about a log line, the quick sentence summary of your work that should start a pitch, accuracy is one thing—but just being accurate can be very misleading if you don’t craft one with care—here are some accurate log lines of well known stories: 

• Transported to a surreal landscape a young girl kills the first person she meets then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
• A moody teen encouraging her boyfriend to kill her.
• A boy left to fend off robbers after his parents abandon him.

Are all accurate, but misleading! To see accurate examples of a logline, consider looking at the copyright summaries found in published books. Within those copyright summaries you’ll see there are sets of details in all of them that follow a bit of a structure:

• A when and a where
• Information about the protagonist with some fundamental descriptors
• Their goal is mentioned 
• As well as the conflict to achieving that goal

You’ll also want to state in clear and simple terms the genre, tone, and demographic your story is aimed at. A good elevator pitch will share enough of a story's essential information in a logline for a potential buyer to understand why they should care about the main character’s core conflict (but keep it short! No more than 75 words).

Eddie goes on to define high and low concept ideas, watch the Zoom replay of his session especially for that golden nugget! Eddie also critiques attendees’ loglines submitted over the Zoom chat and to hear his live editing was fascinating and helpful.

A final reminder from Eddie: An elevator pitch DOES NOT MEAN pitch to someone in an elevator, in a restroom, in the dentist’s chair. You’ve only got one shot to make a first impression, learn to read the room: Editors and agents do want to hear pitches but at appropriate times and places.

Eddie Gamarra and Michael Reisman: Good Books… but are they good for Hollywood?

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

EDDIE GAMARRA: The Real Deal About Television & New Media

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.
  

--POSTED BY ALICE

EDDIE GAMARRA: The Real Deal About Television & New Media

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

EDDIE GAMARRA: The Real Deal About Television & New Media

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

Exclusive SCBWI Team Blog Interview: Eddie Gamarra

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.