Three things you need to improve your script sales
28 Tuesday Aug 2012
IMPROVE YOUR SCRIPT SALES
Back from hols and the first thing on my to-do list is to go out and start selling the script I finished last month. Of course as a true artist I should have no truck with the venal world of script sales… of course not.
Certainly some writers believe that their work should sell itself, and good luck to them. However, I believe that some producers, bless them, sometimes need a little help when it comes to seeing value on the page.
If a worse writer than you is better than you at marketing their work, then who gains if someone buys their script rather than yours? Certainly not the industry. Or the audience. Don’t you owe it to us all to give your screenplay its best chance?
Three essentials for improving script sales
First, be sure that your script really is as good as you believe it is. Without industry feedback you are bound to have doubts, even unconsciously, and those doubts will undermine your ability to sell with confidence.
Get it read by a professional. Not a friend of a friend who once knew a soap star, but an experienced script consultant.
My friends at Euroscript can do this for you, as can I, and there are others. Check references and choose wisely.
Second, know what buyers want. Specifically, what a particular company or producer is looking for, and more generally what all producers and development executives need to be able to do their jobs properly.
There is someone out there who needs you and your script – your job is helping them realise that.
Do your research.
Third, find out what your selling point is. What is that special something that your script has and which will fulfill that need? The spark that sets your script alight. Once you’ve found it, keep practising until you can communicate it in an easy, conversational single sentence.
Did I say it was easy? No. Some people are naturally brilliant at it. They are rarely the most gifted writers! But they get to sell their work more often.
The most gifted writers often have to learn how to sell – but there is a special ironic bonus: when good writers get better at selling they also get better at seeing what’s good about their writing and therefore they improve as writers too.
Put the wind in your sales. You owe it to your script.
2 Comments
maf2scribe4screen said:
September 9, 2012 at 2:01 am
Hi Charles:
Enjoyed reading your very insightful, engaging and enlightening blog here about “improving” our script sales! I’m based here in the States…in den of La La Land, but I do wish I could have the money and time to make it our for your “Masterclass in Selling and Pitching!” Based on well you so easily (not literally speaking here of the “legwork” involved in the sale!) lay out and digest the process of how we can best market our screenplay/series intellectual properties.
I had a been a media trade journalist here in Hollywood (aka an “ink-stained wretch!”) for parts of three decades, but only in the last half-dozen years had the time and energy to write screenplay specs, TV teleplay specs and miniseries on my own time. For the last two years, however, I came across a World War II-era nonfiction idea and did probably one year (or more?!) of pulling extensive declassified document, film-to-video transfer and still-image research. I put it all down — crazily — in both a seven-episode, 15-hour miniseries script format and as well as shorter three-part screenplay trilogy. It’s very big in scope and ambition in terms of what America and Great Britain pulled off in terms of military intelligence and technology acquisition.
I have put up a Blogspot site to promote the overall Intellectual Property and even took all of that film-to-video and still images and assembled on Final Cut Pro as a two-hour YouTube video presentation as “The Documentary Behind the Screenplays.” Still, I’m having a tough time getting the Lit Agents (flesh-peddling middlemen) and Lit Managers here to respond to “unsolicited queries” (except one “boutique literary agency owner” who just requested to read my screenplay [part 1 of 3] that I emailed him a couple of weeks ago), but it’s really been a HARD, solitary SLOG in terms of getting much of any response to the query, Blogspot showcase and YouTube doc presentation — it’s even tough to get friends and relatives to give me feedback too! I’m feeling a bit like a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Walter Mitty these days! ;-D
By the way, I even some queries and one of the miniseries episodic scripts to some UK lit agencies too, but no responses yet for this truly INTERNATIONALLY SET and “OVERSEAS TARGET APPEAL,” broad-based pre- to post-war action/adventure yarn! So, I’m continuing to take HEED of reading your self-help column here (and elsewhere) to seek new insights and perspective on what I’m either doing wrong, right or not at all in try to LURE IN my designated Lit Agent/Manager targets here in L.A., in addition to London!
If you do have any interest and/or any free time, I would most certainly welcome sending you hyperlinks to the Blogspot.com marketing site for the Intellectual Property as well as the YouTube video link for the documentary presentation (please keep in mind I’m narrating and voice-over skills do not approach a James Earl Jones or Patrick Stewart!) at your request — I’m reachable at freeman.michael.a@gmail.com. I would be most humbled and grateful if you had ANY feedback on my marketing/presentation material — and maybe I could return the favor on any kind of media/entertainment research and marketing service stuff from here (please know that I also more recently transitioned to media marketing work here in L.A. including stints at Sony Pictures’ international marketing department as a Sr. Copywriter and Director of Corporate Communications for Showtime Networks Inc. here in the States).
Thank you again for your great, level-headed and sanity-protecting insights on “script marketing and sales”…and the “art of the pitch!” You give many of us former journalists/ink-stained-wretches-turned-screenplay-scribes reason for hope and optimism amidst the solitary isolationism that is common with writing and getting out to market ourselves and our IPs! Best of luck to you and for doing these kind of “good works” in advising “struggling screenwriters” out there — bless ya!
Cheers,
Michael A. Freeman
freemman.michael.a@gmail.com
Charles Harris said:
September 10, 2012 at 9:40 am
Hi Michael
Thanks for your comments.
Do send me the links and I’ll be pleased to have a look. As you’ve found, getting good feedback is hard and you’re absolutely right to keep trying for it. Most writers are scared even to ask, but it’s a collaborative art and feedback is essential.
The hard truth is that to get useful feedback writers (and directors and producers) have in the end to make the investment and pay for professional feedback from those in the industry who will tell you the truth about your project – what works and what needs work.
There are good professional services out there. I know I or my colleagues at Euroscript would be happy to help – we do reports and consultations online to writers from all over the world by email and skype – http://www.euroscript.co.uk/consultancy.html.
Meanwhile, do send me those links.
Very best
Charles