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Tom Nussbaum's avatar

This was very interesting. Thank you.

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Maitland McDonagh's avatar

I'm a non-fiction writer and had the good fortune to have my first book, Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento published by a first-time publisher doing everything on the fly and hitting a bulls eye on every front. No agent--he found my number at work and called me directly. I supplied all the photos (I'd been collecting material for years because I adored the filmmaker), he persuaded the Quay brothers, highly-regarded animators of eerie art/nightmare films to do the cover. Near the end, a friend of a friend in the business came read over the contract with an agent's eye. When the Quays dropped out because a grant came through for them to make a new film (with a tight schedule and imminent start date). But out of basic decency (a rare thing) they stayed on long enough to find a replacement, an excellent Eastern-European artist who did the striking the first-edition cover. I lucked out at every turn and I know how lucky I was.

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