The CV part:
KEN DELMAR, Author, producer, director, fine artist, veteran, sailor and kayaker, was the founder of Delmar Productions, a successful NYC film/video production company from 1970 till 2000. He grew up in Manhattan and Los Angeles, attended Allen Stevenson (NYC), Trinity School (NYC), Middlebury College (Vermont. BA ’63), and Columbia University. He is or was a member of the Authors Guild, Dramatists Guild, SAG/AFTRA, and Stamford Yacht Club.
In 1969, after serving two years in the Army in Germany during the Vietnam War, he returned to the USA with a soon-to-be pregnant wife and $137. He started Delmar Productions in a Stamford, Connecticut barn he shared with a family of raccoons, a pair of possums and a flock of swallows. Within five years, using the strategies he shares in Winning Moves, he had offices in the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center, a home of his own on the Connecticut shore with a beach, a new Mercedes, a twenty-eight-foot sloop, membership in a yacht club, and an income in six figures when that meant something.
He wrote Winning Moves, (Warner Books, 1985), which was translated into five languages and generated two videos and seven audio programs. He is the author of the 2020 books Winning Moves, Body Language for Business (the update for the 1985 edition); No Fall Zone, Fall Prevention and How To Fall If You Do; Shafted, Cautionary Tales in Business; and Pandora Solution, The Race To Create An Antidote To A Terrorist WMD Virus. His next book, to be published early in 2021, is Anne Ascending about a brilliant orphan girl who brings down a Master of The Universe. In the works is the Maple Syrup Mystery, about a billionaire serial killer vs a brilliant, stunning Ukranian student at UVM. Ken lives with his wife, Ulli, on the eastern shore of southern Delaware, in the town of Lewes, the first town in the first state.
The Amazing Story Part:
In 1984 Delmar wrote Winning Moves, a nonfiction book spinning out of his observations of successful executives in the industrial films he was producing in his NYC company, Delmar Productions, Inc. His original intention was to produce two videos, one for men and one for women, that would show the nonverbal strategies in action. He took notes over three years, with his wife, Ulli, painstakingly typing his illegible scrawl for workbooks that were to go with the videos. One day, when she hit 150 pages of text, Ulli told Ken that this was not a workbook any more; it had become a book.
Delmar edited and rewrote and rewrote some more until it was just right, and then, without an agent, he sent the full hard-copy manuscript to Simon and Schuster, Warner Books, and McGraw Hill. Within a few weeks all three publishing companies had sent a polite rejection letter. Delmar was upset. No, he was fuming with righteous indignation. He wrote a short but pointed letter to all three companies, arguing that obviously no one had read his manuscript, because if they had they would have promptly made an offer to publish. His friends who were writers, or who worked or had worked in publishing told him he was crazy and his angry letter was a waste of time that would only exacerbate his rejection.
Two weeks later, on the same Friday, he got three phone calls; one from Bernie Shir-Cliff, editor in chief of Warner; one from Gladys Justin Carr, Editor in Chief of McGraw Hill; and one from a lady editor named Sydney with Simon & Schuster. All three editors said they loved the book and would be making an offer in the next few days. Laughing, crying and in shock, I called the only agent I knew, Andy Ettinger, whose wife, supermodel Heather Hewitt of Ford Models, I had featured in a TV spot. I filled Andy in on the back-story and he said he would be holding an auction with all three publishers.
When he had all three offers, he called me and we chose the winner. Simon & Schuster offered an advance of $30,000, to publish in hard, trade paper and paperback, but they wanted me to cut the book from 330 pages to 100 pages, and they wanted audio and video rights. Warner offered a $20,000 advance, they would publish hard and a paperback, and they would let me keep audio and video rights. They also offered a substantial PR campaign, including a 12-city tour, and translations into five other languages for selling into other markets. McGraw Hill offered a $10,000 advance, and would also let me keep video and audio rights.
I chose Warner Books. It was a pleasure becoming one of their authors, exciting and exhilarating. They even delivered more than they promised. The twelve-city tour was a huge goof, with smart, attractive executive women picking me up at airports and delivering me to prestigious hotels, and then escorting me around to print interviews, radio and TV news and talk shows the next day or two. I met Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra Jr. and a few other notables. I was invited to speak at a University in Bejing, and another in Berlin. I recorded eight different audio programs for eight different companies, and spoke to dozens of organizations and groups around the country for the next five years, and then some. Winning Moves editions and versions and public appearances supported me and my family for five years, and then trailed off gradually.
You have to appreciate that my publishing happy-ending story will never, ever, happen again. Publishing has changed totally, utterly, catastrophically. I was an unknown author, with no agent and no platform. Today you are dead in the water as an unknown with no agent, and no platform. A “platform” means you are a household-name celebrity or star of some sort or another, you are a known expert in some field, you have your own talk show on radio or TV, you are a high-profile personality or politician, or have a HUGE following in social media or somewhere in the WWW, or are a famous author already, like Steven King, Ken Follett, J.K. Rowling, or John Grisham. If you don’t have a platform, no agent or publisher wants to take your call, or will call you back. Just fuggedaboudit.
This is just to save you the effort of writing an angry letter to a publisher or editor who has rejected you. You’re lucky today if anyone even bothers to send you a rejection note. Your angry letter protesting your rejection will just fly directly into the nearest round file, or be deleted to Trash with one keystroke, and produce nothing more than a laugh, or at best a chuckle. Okay, maybe a snicker. If you are a would-be author, I didn’t mean to rain on your parade, but it helps to have a sense of reality to attenuate some of your wanton enthusiasm. Sorry about that.