Screenwriting : Advice by John Sanderson

Readers don't buy or read screenplays much, I'm afraid.

I have two screenwriting books on Amazon. My first one (Writing Screenplays With Intelligence) was a best seller on Amazon. I am lucky to make beer money.

Unless you are Stephen Fry or J K Rowling they isn’t a future to be made. You also have to think if a producer will want it after that. I don’t think you are creating IP with that strategy.

I think you have to ask the question. Do I want to spend a year for beer money and risk never seeing my story in screen.

I hope this has helped.

Hi John,

First...congrats on finishing your first feature screenplay! That's quite an accomplishment.

You first mentioned "publishing a screenplay," and then "publishing as a book." I don't know how well unknown scripts sell if they are published somewhere, but many people do convert their unsold scripts into novels. That's a pretty good thing to do, and especially if you can attain some/many/thousands and thousands of sales. And producers and studios make a lot of films based on books, and especially books that sell well. It's like a proof of concept (that people like this book), and it's nice to have a potential built-in audience for a film in the highly-competitive film industry. Films like The Martian, Legally Blonde and the Fifty Shades franchise started as self-published books.

Given that you've stated this is your first screenplay, though, are you sure it's really market-ready? You are competing against highly-skilled writers when trying to sell a screenplay, after all - the best of the best of the best. No disrespect to you - your screenplay might be great and marketable. But have you at least had it read by someone accomplished at critiquing screenplays, like a reputable professional script consultant - or at least by other writers who aren't beginners? I hope so.

But yeah...converting a screenplay into a book is a good idea. If you are fortunate enough to sell a screenplay, you usually relinquish all rights to that story and characters. If you are fortunate enough to write a book that someone wants to turn into a film, you usually sell the film rights to your story, and retain the publishing rights and even the character rights.

Best fortunes in your creative endeavors, John!

Craig D Griffiths I am willing to ask a stupid question. What do you mean by creating IP?

Very much appreciate the comments and advise. Very helpful. thank you guy's!

Craig D Griffiths: your comment about "no future" is not really true. A lot of people have sold tens of thousands....hundreds of thousands....and even millions of copies of their books via or starting with the self-publishing route. Many of those authors have also used that as a springboard for other successes. I know the term "best-seller" has quite a wide - and even questionable - meaning these days, but some best-sellers make back a lot more than "beer money" for those authors.

While we all know that success in any creative type-of work is not easy to attain, I would re-consider a "no future" type-of statement, and especially if I were trying to sell my own "how-to" book in any creative field, like you are..

Best fortunes in your future endeavors, Craig!

Do you mean publishing a screenplay formatted as a screenplay, or rewriting the screenplay into book form and prose?

John, churning out your first FL script - a Herculean task by itself - congratulations. Eric has made a solid point - it's not readers who buy scripts - it's producers who buy scripts so I suspect that trying to sell it as a book would be awfully remote. One other thing you need to recognize right up front (I don't mean this disparagingly) is that your script most likely sucks. Every screenwriter goes through this. Dan's given you some good advice and I'll second it. Set this script aside and write another, then another... Eventually your writing will get f you stay with it. Go back to this script in a few years - you'll see how bad it is but you'll have developed the knowledge about how to spiff it up. All the best.

Bill Costantini my comment about no future was in reference to selling a screenplay on Amazon. I didn’t see the reference to a book, my bad.

DL Stickler I am a fan of selling a book (a reference I failed to see.) and developing IP around those characters and story. Then this can be leveraged in other media/formats such as screenplay. But if you are selling the screenplay like a book. I do see that developing the interest that a traditional prose would.

If money is the object, bite the bullet. It sounds like it won’t put you on the street to avail yourself of Stage32 coverage, or at the very least a pitch session.

Thank you everyone on the very helpful advice. To answer Dan maxx, I did mean by screenplay format, sorry about that. I may possibly look at turning it into a novel first or even bite the bullet (after the Christmas season

No real market for published screenplays.

William Martell which is a shame. They are an exciting read. But perhaps that is my bias. We all strive to have a great opening shot or scene, an inciting incident that propels us into our story.

So many books have meandering starts. I stopped reading the Lord Of The Rings as a kid at page 80. My brother - massive book nerd - told me, after page 110 is it the best book ever. That wouldn’t wash with us and a screenplay.