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As a management company,
AEI normally offers new clients 1-3 sets of "development notes." But
when that is not sufficient to bring a project to marketable standards,
the project is referred to The Writer's
Lifeline.
One of the services that makes AEI unique in its niche is the work
done by AEI/Writer's Lifeline to develop stories and writers for the
commercial marketplace. Approximately 75% of AEI sales have been from
writers developed in Writer's Lifeline, Inc.., directed by Ken
Atchity's sister Andrea
McKeown. Writer's Lifeline, Inc. manages approximately 150 clients
- with AEI having "right of first refusal to represent" most of them.
Ken Atchity was Distinguished Instructor at
UCLA Writers Program from 1970-87, and founded the "First Wednesdays
Writers Series" at the Beverly Hills Library, devoted to locating
and assisting new writers break in and re-motivating professional
writers. The series alternated between practical information for writers
based on A
Writer's Time: A Guide to the Creative Process , and the "Great
Storytellers Series" illustrating the great storytellers' storytelling
strategies from a commercial writer's perspective. Many of these programs
have been taped and are available from AEI Tapes.
AEI drew its first clients from Ken's lectures throughout the U.S.
to adult education classes and corporations on subjects including
writing, career change, creativity, motivation, and "the Type C personality."
Writer's Lifeline, Inc. is AEI's "farm team," developing new talent
and readying literary materials of all kinds for the marketplace.
Development, structure, and style editors as well as staff writers
reporting to Andrea
McKeown:
- coach clients through a first draft or rewrite of their projects,
or
- assist them in the actual writing.
This service is financed by way of fees from the writers themselves,
from the companies that refer them (nearly half of The Writer's Lifeline's
new clients are referrals from agencies, publishers, studios, and
production companies that no longer have time for in-house development),
or by higher percentages charged by AEI for taking an investment risk
on a story.
AEI Management and Production generally has an informal "right of
first refusal" on stories developed by Writer's Lifeline, Inc..
Sales of Writer's Lifeline clients include Governor Jesse Ventura's
Governor Jesse Ventura's
I Ain't Got Time to Bleed (ghost-written by AEI/WL), Ripley
Entertainment's The
Amazing World of Robert Ripley, Steve Alten's Meg
and The
Trench , James Michael Pratt's The
Last Valentine, and Michael Murray's 3-novel deal for SealSix.
Because the Writer's
Lifeline has grown in three years to nearly 150 clients, and the
Management company to nearly 30, AEI is increasingly capable of "internal
packaging," where one AEI client in need of a writer is paired with
a developed AEI writer in a joint venture deal presided over by AEI
(which receives a minimum of 25% for its "packaging" services instead
of its usual 15%). |
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