Writing a novel, then turning it into a screenplay... good or bad idea?

[Nektonic]

I am seriously thinking / planning on writing a novel of one of my story ideas instead of going straight into a screenplay.

If I were to write a novel and either manage to get it published or self publish it, then adapt it to a screenplay would that kill my chances of then selling said screenplay to a studio at a later date?

I was wondering if anyone with experience dealing with Hollywood in respect to writing would be able to answer this. I would think that it wouldn't matter, but want to be sure.

 

[clang]

no one will want a screenplay just because it's based on a self-published novel. But a successful novel (big seller and/or literary awards) could be very attractive to a studio, and they might be delighted to hear you also had a screenplay version (but be warned, they might like the book but hate your screenplay).

So I don't think it can do any harm to write both - some excellent movie/book combos have been written over the years - having both is neither advantage or disadvantage to selling either.

Be prepared for the possibility that you'll end up with a great book which would make a terrible movie or vice versa - not all stories are translatable across both media

 

[Nektonic]

Thanks clang. You're right, a self published work will probably not garner much attention unless it is that one in a billion success story that somehow ends up selling a lot. I would have to finish the book before deciding to adapt it into a screenplay. I just want to be aware of the options for the future. I've always wanted to write prose fiction and not be limited to screenwriting.

In the current Hollywood climate specs aren't as sought after anymore since so many films are adaptations and remakes. It makes sense to not become limited to the notion that you will get lucky and sell a script to a studio. Why not write something that you can control and publish on your own? You own the rights, you can do with it what you want.

As for the possibility that a novel might not make a good script / film... I am aware of that. I would not be afraid to restructure and change things in the adaptation process. I understand that it is often times necessary to do that in order to get something that will work cinematically.

 

[10s]

The producers I've talked to about this novel/screenplay find it a favorable situation. Yes, both works need to be outrageous knockouts!

 

[Nektonic]

The producers I've talked to about this novel/screenplay find it a favorable situation. Yes, both works need to be outrageous knockouts!

So lets say that a writer self publishes their novel. In most cases, even with a good marketing strategy, a self published book will not sell very much. It is just the way these things go. Will the studios condemn the script because sales of the novel were not huge, even if the chances of sales being huge are not really possible?

 

[KeithK]

So lets say that a writer self publishes their novel. In most cases, even with a good marketing strategy, a self published book will not sell very much.

Not true. Self published works fail because of the lack of a marketing plan and access to and understanding of the distribution system booksellers use. Most self-published authors do not have the resources to mount a media campaign and without that booksellers will not carry your books. Although, I will say one thing, if you self publish a book getting a chance to pitch it to booksellers and retailers is a million times easier than getting a chance to pitch your screenplay to Hollywood.

If you really want to do the book then the movie thing, get your book published by a big house. Then selling your screenplay based on the book will be eaiser if your book does well. If your book does not do well, selling the screenplay will vary from much harder to as if the book had never been written.

 

[10s]

All good prior info.

Writing a book beside a screenplay is a lot of work but it's an angle toward getting produced. Producers want to sell their wares, that's tickets and DVDs. This takes a great story, the problem is no one can spot a great story and be resonably assurred that it will bring home the green. A novel can help fill out the story [this means understanding by those interested in producing] , give it a broader base of readership and make it appear as a less risky project; hollywood is risk adversive, and rightfully so with the millions they pour into projects and many have dismal returns, the winners end up supporting all the loosers. The producers that spoke to me about this book/screenplay appeal had just produced Speed Racer, and that turned out to be a huge dud, so what do they know? -- but they have their hand on the money.

Target 15-25 males, but make it as 4 quadrant as possible. ET is the perfect 4 quadrant appealing film with the best Production cost to Box Office revenue of any film; it takes place in a typical neighborhood, now how much did that save them? They'll tell you, "It should be like all the others but a little different, and something in it should be outrageous!!!," afterall, that's the Movies.

All this sounds formulaic and it is, -- somewhat, but so is practically everything we use and buy in our lives. We are authoring the blueprints of a product we hope the general public will embrace, just like who ever came up with the ingredients for Coke, fritos, Toyotas, ipods, etc... So am I being cynical? yes & no. No matter how formulaic and targeted you get, there is plenty of room for putting real heart & soul into your piece, btw, these are the works that sell the best because we instinctively are attracted to what resonates with us as Truth.

 

[Nektonic]

Not true. Self published works fail because of the lack of a marketing plan and access to and understanding of the distribution system booksellers use. Most self-published authors do not have the resources to mount a media campaign and without that booksellers will not carry your books. Although, I will say one thing, if you self publish a book getting a chance to pitch it to booksellers and retailers is a million times easier than getting a chance to pitch your screenplay to Hollywood.

If you really want to do the book then the movie thing, get your book published by a big house. Then selling your screenplay based on the book will be eaiser if your book does well. If your book does not do well, selling the screenplay will vary from much harder to as if the book had never been written.

When I said a self published author will most likely not sell much I should have clarified that I meant as compared to a best seller. I get the impression that Hollywood probably doesn't care much unless it is on the best seller list. So you're saying that if the book doesn't do well sales wise, then it will tarnish the chances of later selling a screenplay version?

10s, what you say makes a lot of sense from a marketing point-of-view. I am familiar with the four quadrant concept. While I know it will help sell a script, I don't know if I can just force everything I write into that template. Having said that though, it is definitely something to always be aware of when conceiving a story and planning on how it can be sold and marketed. And as for adapting a novel, I am not saying that I would immediately develop both the book and script side-by-side. I think I'd go nuts trying to do that. I would just like the option of taking the novel and turning it into a script at a later date if I felt inclined to do so. If it ends up that it would be a waste of time because the original book is tarnished by not being a mega-seller, then I wouldn't do it.

 

[10s]

another 2 cents from my pocket:

When it comes down to getting your screenplay produced it's all about marketing, however distasteful that may be. Movies are a business, screenplays are the blueprints of the business product. The people who buy your screenplay are all about business. Marketing is simply a way of helping guide your efforts toward a productive end, that being a sale, finding an audience, and another chance at getting produced.

A structural writing template actually brings freedom, much as a musical scale brings freedom to an otherwise cacaphony of tonal pitches. It's underlying story structure helps you write so nothing is forced, rather, it's a guide to help you freely create & then position these key creations is the best possible place. In other words, it's a rule-of-thumb shortcut. When these guidelines don't work, by all means go your own way, but they make the task of facing the great empty page much less daunting and it also foces one to face the tough work and not skip out on the difficult writing chores.

A while ago I was attending a Blake Synder [Save the Cat] seminar/workshop. During this session, Blake told us he had just gone through the trade rags and was merely looking at titles and loglines when he came across a new production he thoguht had some potential, it was titled, "4 Christmases." He said way back then, this has real commercial potential and went on to spell out what producers are looking for: 4 quadrant, low production cost, draws in A list talent, has a ready made audience and release time of the year, theatres want it, on & on... Well, he was correct, it took the #1 spot last week. I think Blake Snyder's insights are well worth the effort to study and not write off as simple and unsophisticated.

While a 4 Christmases may not be the fulfillment I desire as a writer, it certainly wouldn't hurt my career if it were on my resume. Wanting to be a commerically successful writer while working on something that has little chance of commercial success, just seems foolish.

Making a step outline from your novel while you're writing it would be a nice kick start if you ever wanted to pursue a screenplay.

 

[seventy-six]

If you self published the novel, I wouldn't advertise the fact when it comes to pitching it to producers as books that are self published are assumed to be so bad that the writer had no choice but to pay someone to publish it.

With that said, my writing partner and I wrote a script based on his POD novel and it got picked up by a producer.

 

[wcmartell]

A producer buys the rights to a novel because they have heard about it. The book sold well, or they read it in galleys when a top publishing house sent it around looking for a film deal.

The reason they buy a book or comic book or do a remake is because the story has already been proven a success in its original form.

Unless your self published novel is on the NYT Best Sellers List, selling to Hollywood is a longshot.

But a novel that sells is still a novel. It is its own end product.

Oh, and they still do buy specs. But most often a great spec is what opens the door to an assignment... adapting some book or comic book or doing a remake.

- Bill

 

[Nektonic]

Thanks guys. This is a lot of good advice.

While a 4 Christmases may not be the fulfillment I desire as a writer, it certainly wouldn't hurt my career if it were on my resume. Wanting to be a commerically successful writer while working on something that has little chance of commercial success, just seems foolish.

Making a step outline from your novel while you're writing it would be a nice kick start if you ever wanted to pursue a screenplay.

I have read Blake Snyder's book "Save the Cat", which was a huge eye opener for me on many things, but especially on story structure. I get what you are saying though. To break in you have to think commercially so that your work gets read and can then open doors for you. I have some ideas that are bizarre and would not really appeal to Hollywood, while other ideas are more commercially oriented. It all depends. I like all kinds of stories and films. I feel that a novel would give me more room to breath with the weirder stories.

The idea of a step outline could be a good way to make things easier if I do decide to adapt the novel. Thanks for the idea.

If you self published the novel, I wouldn't advertise the fact when it comes to pitching it to producers as books that are self published are assumed to be so bad that the writer had no choice but to pay someone to publish it.

With that said, my writing partner and I wrote a script based on his POD novel and it got picked up by a producer.

I hear you loud and clear. I would only make light of the script being an adaptation of a self published novel if the book sold really well.

Congratulations on the sale.

A producer buys the rights to a novel because they have heard about it. The book sold well, or they read it in galleys when a top publishing house sent it around looking for a film deal.

The reason they buy a book or comic book or do a remake is because the story has already been proven a success in its original form.

Unless your self published novel is on the NYT Best Sellers List, selling to Hollywood is a longshot.

But a novel that sells is still a novel. It is its own end product.

Oh, and they still do buy specs. But most often a great spec is what opens the door to an assignment... adapting some book or comic book or doing a remake.

- Bill

Part of the reason I would like to write a novel is that I know how nearly impossible it is to sell a spec to a studio. Writing a novel gives me more say in what happens to the story. It may not be easy, but I can market my own book and maybe make some money on. At the very worst I will get my work out there and get some more notice. You gotta start somewhere, right? And who knows, it could be the catalyst to something bigger someday. Plus, I feel that part of the reason to write something in the first place is to tell a story to an audience, whether it is a script, a novel, a comic book, etc.

wcmartell, I've read and learned from many of your articles in Script magazine. I didn't know you were a member on DVXUSER. Great to have you here in the writing section.

I was thinking of the whole novel to screenplay adaptation as something that could be done years later after completing other projects. If I ever write a novel that I am pleased with, I am not sure I will even adapt it into a screenplay. Depends on how I feel about it at that time, which could be years from now. Right now is too early to decide that. I have some ideas that I think could work as either a novel or a screenplay, as well as plenty of ideas that would really work best as one or the other. I've always wanted to write a novel anyways. You only live once.

 

[KeithK]

If you self published the novel, I wouldn't advertise the fact when it comes to pitching it to producers as books that are self published are assumed to be so bad that the writer had no choice but to pay someone to publish it.

With that said, my writing partner and I wrote a script based on his POD novel and it got picked up by a producer.

Its hard to hide the fact that something was self published, but you can make it look almost as good as something spit out by random house if work at it. There are many kinds of self-publishing. Some are very amateurish, others are polished and professional.

If you want to self-publish a book and have a snowball's chance in hell at being sucessful, you need to form a publishing company. Incorporate (or hire an attorney to do it for you), get ISBN numbers issued, get UPC codes issued if you are going to sell at retailers (expensive - and retailers like Target/Wal-Mart/Etc will not even touch your book if you dont have an UPC), get EAN Bookland barcodes done (cheap - this is your ISBN number and MSRP encoded into a single barcode), get your books into Books in Print through RR Bowker. Once you have that done, now you go and print your books at a real printer. Plan to print 25,000 copies to start with. Any less and the price per unit will be too high. Plan to invest a few thousand dollars for your intial print run. Oh yeah, before you do this, you need to have it typeset in Pagemaker or InDesign. That will cost a few thousand too.

When your books are printed and in hand, now you need to setup your distribution channels, because Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon.com will not deal with you directly except through the "Small Press" departments. Those departments will make your book avaliable in stores - special order only. You wont sell many books that way. In order to sell lots of books, your books need to be on the shelves. For that, you have to approach thier buyers and sell them and get them to carry it as a regular stock item. In order to do that, they will require you to have at least one distributor. Distributors are nice. Distributors set you up in thier system and they place orders from you, you ship to them on consignment, then they sell to thier customers. They pack your orders, handle billing, etc. They also demand 40% to 55% (most are now at 50% to 55% of retail) of the retail price of your book for thier services. And they will pay you once every 6 months or so, whenever they feel like it. You'll deal with BS from your distributor. If books get damaged and returned - regardless of where in the pipe or whose fault), they deduct them from your sales and trash them, unless you are willing to pay to get them back. No one wants to sit on damaged inventory and the system is setup so that the publisher eventually eats that cost.

So you've got books barcoded, printed, distribution channel setup, you're on Amazon and you've talked to the buyers at the two book chains and you've tried to push to big box stores. Now what? Well, you market. You setup a booth at BookExpo, you join ABFFE (American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression) and get involved with thier stuff. You go on tour and hit every mom and pop store you can find and convince them to let you do a signing there. You incur thousands in trade show booth fees, travel fees and such. You pitch morning drive radio shows. If its controversial, you try to get Howard Stern, Bob & Tom and crew to talk about it. And then you just hope you got noticed.

The above is how a professional self-publish operation does it. Some make decent money at it because they know how the game is played and they do it well. Bare minimum of $25,000 to bring a single title to print and market it effectively.

Amatures use print on demand places (or lulu.com which just SCREAMS amauter hour) which claim to produce the same quality (they do not) and your price per book will be so high that you wont be able to turn a profit on it. If your book sells for $7.95 and you give up 55% to your distributor, you are going to be looking at $3.58 and thats what you have left to turn a profit with and you have not even paid for the book to be printed yet or any other business expenses like shipping, office space, phone lines, internet service, credit card processing, computers, marketing, professional services (attorney, CPA), bad debts, not to mention money for yourself.

Also, no one pays any attention to literary awards at all - unless they are recognized awards i.e. something done by ALA, etc. I know of three places right now where I could send two review copies of a book along with a check for $250 and I will be guaranteed to win an award. Thats because the place doing the awards is a scam, sort of like a diploma mill. Everyone with $250 can have an award-winning book. And they give you an official-looking seal to put on the front cover and unless you know the latest deals on who is handing out phony awards (there is litterally a new place every week) then you wouldn't know the difference.

To be perfectly honest with you, if you start a self-publishing venture and it takes off, you wont have time to write a screenplay. You'll be too busy running the other business. Its a full time job.

---

If you are set on doing the book then the screenplay, take my advice and let someone else publish it. There is so much involved and the rewards are so small in self-publishing (unless you really generate momentium, then you could stand to cash in big time because you are the publisher and will get to keep all of the profit instead of just a small royalty) that you will be hard pressed to make any money at it. A reputable publisher will know how to do all of this stuff and will have the resources to market your work. And they'll give you an advance which you can most likely keep even if your book never sells a single copy (depending on your contract terms). Keep in mind that while Hollywood only greenlights, what, a few hundred scripts each year at most, even if you include the indie studios? Book publishers, collectively, publish tens of thousands of new titles every year. Just from a sheer odds perspective, your odds of selling your book manuscript are better and a large publishing house has the best chance of giving you best-seller status which you'll need if you expect to sell the screenplay.

When I said a self published author will most likely not sell much I should have clarified that I meant as compared to a best seller. I get the impression that Hollywood probably doesn't care much unless it is on the best seller list. So you're saying that if the book doesn't do well sales wise, then it will tarnish the chances of later selling a screenplay version?

Of course it will - if the producer/studio knows that the book it was based on was a complete flop. People in Hollywood tend to be somewhat business savy. Every concept gets one go around and they rarely produce a second movie when a first movie that closely resembles the second flopped. When pitching a screenplay to anyone (agent, producer, whatever), you'd never compare your script to a movie that was widely considered a box office failure, would you? Why would comparing it to a book that was a failure be any different? As soon as you tell them that there is a book in print based on your script (and it will come up sooner or later, and long before you get the check or sign on the dotted line due to the impact on rights), the first question is do you have the rights and the next question, shortly behind the first, is going to be how did the book do.

 

[Nektonic]

The cold hard truth. Thanks Keith.

I wouldn't want to screw up the chances of selling a script if that is the best medium for a particular story. As much as I hate to admit it, from the responses I've gotten so far it looks like it is not a good idea to try to do both with the same story. I will pick one or the other and stick with it for each particular story.

As for self publishing, I figured that I would do the POD route coupled with an online marketing campaign. I do not have the kind of money (as Keith stated $25,000) to publish and market a book in the same way a major publisher would. Plus, I would obviously want to still be able to do more writing and not have to stop for a few years because I was self-marketing the first book every waking hour of my life.

Are there any POD success stories? Has anyone used a POD service combined with a savvy online marketing campaign and sold a decent amount of books. I would think that if you could do that and get some positive press, a major publishing house or a literary agent would become interested in your work. Maybe I'm totally off?

Thanks for the responses guys. This has been very informative.

 

[KeithK]

The cold hard truth. Thanks Keith.

I wouldn't want to screw up the chances of selling a script if that is the best medium for a particular story. As much as I hate to admit it, from the responses I've gotten so far it looks like it is not a good idea to try to do both with the same story. I will pick one or the other and stick with it for each particular story.

As for self publishing, I figured that I would do the POD route coupled with an online marketing campaign. I do not have the kind of money (as Keith stated $25,000) to publish and market a book in the same way a major publisher would. Plus, I would obviously want to still be able to do more writing and not have to stop for a few years because I was self-marketing the first book every waking hour of my life.

Are there any POD success stories? Has anyone used a POD service combined with a savvy online marketing campaign and sold a decent amount of books. I would think that if you could do that and get some positive press, a major publishing house or a literary agent would become interested in your work. Maybe I'm totally off?

Thanks for the responses guys. This has been very informative.

Well, if you just want to self publish for fun or because you have something to say, you can get started with a couple of grand and probably make decent money at it. But you'll likely not see yourself on the Best Seller List. It is possible to make some spending money with this, but I would not count on living off it.

Below is some info you can use to get your book out with a minimum of hassle and expense. Once you get the book out, you can promote it by a variety of means. Talk it up on relevant forums that relate to the topic, list on eBay/Craigslist, etc.

And you can still "Go on Tour" locally/regionally with minimum expense, there are probably a 1,000 little bookstores within 6 hours or so of you that never get asked by any author to have a signing and would be flattered by the attention, so you may be able to push it out that way.

Places to Sell Your Book:

• Amazon Advantage (For 55% of retail, you'll get listed online and sell consignment to them. It will be a love-hate relationship. They will get you some sales on a steadby basis with little or no effort on your part. On the other hand, they order stock when they feel like it and in numbers they feel like and you are required to ship them right away, so you have to keep titles on hand. They take forever to pay, books damaged in their warehouse will be returned to you for credit (not like you'll have any choice in the matter, you are selling on consignment and so you are not paid until they sell, so they just wont pay you for those) and you get to pay for return freight. If you refuse, they'll trash them. "Damaged" by Amazon's standards includes things like bent corners or a spine that is not perfectly square. Note that at Amazon the squeaky wheel does not get greased, the squeaky wheel gets his Advantage account closed. Also, Amazon has more than a dozen distribution centers. They love to order small quantities and have you ship them to multiple DCs, which allows postage to start to eat a substantial portion of your bottom line.)
  
• Barnes & Noble (They accept almost anybody and this will get your book available from stores as "special order" and on the website. They'll make an inital order of 2-5 copies and order more as they sell. You need to have a fax machine to recive the purchase orders from them. If you sell well as a special order, you may be able to talk your rep into getting you into the stores. You have to invoice them to get paid and you will have to follow up. If you don't, they wont pay. They pay 60 days in arrears (Net 60 days))
  
• Borders/Walden Books (Recently went "Hollywood", no longer takes unsolicited submissions).

Places to Print Your Book:

• Fidlar Doubleday (A Good Sales Rep: Lisa Mallory, High Costs, Minimum Print Run is 25 Copies)
• Whitehall Press (5,000 - 96 pg, 2 Color Cover, 6x9 Perfectbounds for $0.74/unit)

Places to Distribute for You:

• The Distributors (Patti forget the last name is the buyer, talk to her).
• Baker & Taylor (Huge Company, Stuffy, Hard to Deal with, But Will Open Doors for You, I.e. Sales to Libraries and Such)

If you go forward, the best place to save money is not on printing but on typesetting. If you know your way around InDesign, Quark or Pagemaker, you can probably do this yourself and save hundreds if not thousands.In any event, good luck and have fun. Take the biggest print run you can afford so that you get your cost per book down as low as possible, which will give you the largest possible profit margin. At least a thousand copies at a time, but the more the better.

 

[Nektonic]

Well, if you just want to self publish for fun or because you have something to say, you can get started with a couple of grand and probably make decent money at it. But you'll likely not see yourself on the Best Seller List. It is possible to make some spending money with this, but I would not count on living off it.

Below is some info you can use to get your book out with a minimum of hassle and expense. Once you get the book out, you can promote it by a variety of means. Talk it up on relevant forums that relate to the topic, list on eBay/Craigslist, etc.

And you can still "Go on Tour" locally/regionally with minimum expense, there are probably a 1,000 little bookstores within 6 hours or so of you that never get asked by any author to have a signing and would be flattered by the attention, so you may be able to push it out that way.

My whole notion to doing self publishing / POD was to use it as a starting point to hopefully go onto eventually landing an agent or a deal. POD is not entirely my end goal.

I had planned on using Amazon's CreateSpace for on-demand printing and sales through Amazon, while ordering some copies for myself from them. They charge only what the initial printing fee is to the author, and not my set retail price. Have you had any experience with the CreateSpace service?

Maybe I would be better off using one of the printers you suggested for copies that I would sell to local bookstores and at any events I attended to promote my work.

I didn't know that Barnes & Noble allowed you to sell through them. Good to know.

Thanks again Keith. This is all very helpful information.

 

[KeithK]

I had planned on using Amazon's CreateSpace for on-demand printing and sales through Amazon, while ordering some copies for myself from them. They charge only what the initial printing fee is to the author, and not my set retail price. Have you had any experience with the CreateSpace service?

I have no knowledge of CreateSpace. I imagine (and it sounds) quite a bit like lulu.com. The problem all of these services have in common is that they are VERY expensive to use. You wont be able to buy your book from most POD services and still be able to afford to give booksellers and distributors the 40% to 55% they demand. Fidlar Doubleday is high but they are one of the cheapest POD services I have encountered and the product is of a reasonable quality.