Chapter 179
Behind each celebrity, there’s a fully-staffed team or an agency.
A star is one person and can’t possibly do everything it takes to propel their image into the cultural stratosphere. The celebrity maintains the status and fame, but the team or agency surrounding them makes the decisions and actually gets things done.
These are the people people need to reach out to when trying to work with celebrities.
In a way, celebrity teams are the invisible army that stands behind the celebrity.
No matter if one is a big or small celebrity, everyone has a team or an agency. It was because they were a necessity if one wanted to succeed in any entertainment industry.
Normally, actors would join agencies as it was way easier to navigate through their career with the connections and power of an agency but a lot of actors also had personal teams.
These were mostly set up by already established and big stars as young and small stars are gobbled up by agents from big agencies early on.
It is only after they are more stable in their careers that they try to get out of the agency.
One of the reasons behind it was personal meetings were way better than agencies in comfort and the actor had way more power over them.
For Aiden, the case was very different.
He had never joined an agency and was always on his own. So, it was way more important for him to get a team. These days, he was anyway thinking of lowering Wade’s workload.
For a while, he had only seen Wade on phone calls because of too many trying to access him for a gig or an interview for Aiden. .
That’s why, Aiden himself had proposed the idea of getting a team.
Wade had immediately agreed with it. Infact, he was thinking about it himself. That’s where the 2 million that Aiden got from Aaron Hart’s agency came in handy.
With that money, it was easy to hire good team members and get a rented apartment for the team.
They needed a big space for everyone to work well and handle everything related to Aiden, so he could just focus on singing and acting.
Some celebrity teams have like 50-60 members and it was almost like a one man studio but Aiden didn’t need that many people. He only needed a small team that he could be comfortable with.
“So, for the team, we are really going to need specialists in your case as you are both an actor and singer. Some people would still be common like stylists and makeup artists. Although we would only need them for special occasions.”
“You contacted Miranda?”
Aiden asked and Wade nodded his head. Miranda was the makeup artist that he had worked with on the sets of [Black Saints]. He had gotten a good relationship with her back then and he remembered that she had mentioned that she worked as a stylist too.
So, he had asked Wade to contact her for the job.
“I contacted her and she agreed to do it but we need to talk about the details and other things. Stylists and makeup artists are not permanent members, so it would be more like we would pay her separately instead of a fixed salary.”
Wade explained. The conversation went on with them talking about the other members such as the social media manager who would handle everything that would be posted on Aiden’s social media accounts. They also talked about the Business manager who was mostly an accountant who would take care of Aiden’s money and how he was spending it.
There was also the Tour manager, the marketing guy and a personal legal counsel for all the legal matters.
Wade was handling everything till now but as Aiden was going to go big from now on, he needed to expand his team.
“That’s a lot of people we are gathering.” Aiden said, sipping on his coffee, wondering if he was going to get along with everyone.
“Yeah, teams are like that. Anyway, I know a lawyer from a Trust Law agency. He could be the guy we are looking for in legal matters. Some celebs need a lot of lawyers.”
“I have seen that.” Aiden chuckled. “We don’t need a manager right?”
“No, because I’m handling that. Anyway, I’m with you more than I’m with my girlfriend. I’m the perfect manager and agent.”
Wade frowned, looking at Aiden who could only scratch the back of his head. His career was pretty tiring and he knew that well. Because of it, Wade was also not getting a lot of free time.
“Don’t worry. My professional life is way better currently. I prefer working with you rather than someone who doesn’t take things seriously and is just after the money and fame.”
“I’m after fame too.” Aiden replied.
“Yeah but you know how to handle it. You are not a moron. Fame is pretty much that alcohol that intoxicates you. Money does the same and you need to have a lot of control to be the one to control the money and fame instead of vice versa.”
As someone who had worked as a shadow of celebrities, Wade knew how powerful fame and money was, especially because after one gets a lot of fans, it was normal to get arrogant.
Thankfully, Aiden’s legs were still on the ground.
“Anyway, I think we should go visit the real estate agent office and check the apartment I found. If you like it, let’s get it for the team.”
At those words, Aiden couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.
“Have you even found a team? Don’t we only have Miranda on board yet?”
“Yeah, but I know some people. Some I worked with before. They are out of work currently and I think they would fit straight right in. I contacted them last night about it and by this point, they would already have made their decision.”
***
As Aiden was busy in setting up a team for himself, Viking publishing released the name of the books that had made up to the top three.
Over 500 books were submitted but in the end, only three of them were left. Those were the best books that Vikings publishing was going to publish.
Though, the final winner was only going to be announced in the award ceremony. It was to maintain the interest of the people.
These books were <A devil in the city>, <Dumb people> and <Behind the scenes>.
Yes, Aiden’s book had been chosen for the top three.
Out of all these three books, two were from rookie authors. The author of <A devil in the city> was someone who had participated in poem competitions a lot and it was his first time writing a book and <Behind the scenes> was by Aiden who had just entered with the pen name “Aiden Silver”.
Obviously, it wasn’t a lot creative but Aiden had still decided to go with it.
Only the author of <Dumb people> was known to the public as a very established author had revealed on his social media that he entered the contest with a pen name.
A lot of people thought that he was just waiting for the results before revealing himself as the author.
It was guaranteed that he wouldn’t have revealed himself if he had not come out in the top three.
At least that’s what people thought as they barraged the author’s social media with comments like that. There were also comments congratulating the author and wishing him best of luck.
The author had a few famous works in the past, so he had a good following.
‘It looks like the reception is pretty good.’
Zac Anderson, British author of 34 years, looked at the comment section of his Sparrow post in which he had revealed himself as the author of <Dumb people>. Some people were writing bad comments as in the past, he had posted some things that had offended a lot of people.
But Zac didn’t really care about all those people.
His social media engagement was just going to go up from the number of hate comments. In his mind, these people would even buy his book just to hate on it.
‘Those other two books. What could they be about? The first one looks like a thriller by the name of it and the second one is maybe a drama of some sort. Hard to tell by names. Anyway, these are rookie authors. I will easily beat them.’
He thought in his mind, checking up on the whole announcement on Vikings publishing handle.
As he was a young and established author, he was very arrogant and didn’t really think that rookies would be able to beat him.
In fact, he won’t even mind betting on it.
Adjacent to where he was sitting, there was a trophy cabinet with a lot of trophies that he had won since childhood. He was called a prodigy from the start because of it.
Among those trophies, there was also the trophy of ‘Vikings New book of the year’. That was the name of the award that Aiden had participated in.
Two years ago, Zac had entered the same competition to win it under a pen name. There wasn’t any rule that the same author can’t enter the competition two times under different pen names, so he had entered it again this year.
Actually, he wasn’t really after the award. He had already won it once.
The thing he was after was the acclaim that he would get.
Zac’s sole goal was to get his work adapted into different mediums at this point of his career. He knew that getting your work adapted into a movie was the way for writers to become millionaires.
Zac wanted that and because of Viking publishing connections in Hollywood, he had entered the competition. In hopes of an adaption, he had even made his novel a comedy drama, something that was very cheap to adapt compared to a fantasy or sci-fi.
‘This year, I’m surely going to win the award and then my next goal would be Hollywood.’
…
//DreamNote//
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