Category Archives: Business of writing

Novelists, Meet Filmmakers. Filmmakers, Novelists

Anthologies, Business of writing, , , , , , ,

By R.S. Mellette

Right now, there seem to be two schools of production in Hollywood – those companies that make movies based on short stories or novels, and those that don’t. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the first group is doing a lot better than the second.

The companies making films based on published properties tend to be either major studios or mid- to upper-end independents. A few of these companies started as uber-indies and were smart enough to acquire published work, and are now playing in the big leagues. Temple Hill with the Twilight series comes to mind.

But most uber-indie production companies don’t mess with published works. I know this because I’ve been a screener and/or programmer for the Dances With Films Festival in Los Angeles since 2001. I can’t tell you the number of submissions I’ve screened where I think, why did the filmmakers decide to tell THIS story?

I’m also a novelist. I have novelist friends all over the world who have wonderful stories they’ve told on paper. They would love to see these works made into films, but they’re completely baffled by the filmmaking community.

This article is intended to help both sides bridge the gap, meet each other, and hopefully work together on mutually beneficial projects.

I’ll start with the filmmakers:

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to think long and hard about why you chose filmmaking as a career. Deep down in your soul, is the answer to that question, “I want to make movies,” or “I want to tell stories?”

Don’t cheat. If you had to choose between just making movies and just telling stories, which would it be?

Knowing thousands of filmmakers, I have a feeling that most would never give up the set. They love the sweat, pressure, art, camaraderie, adrenaline, thrill, and insanity of making movies. Creating the story on the blank page is secondary to making the story come to life, and that’s fine. That’s why you’re filmmakers.

Sure, some would rather gouge out their eyes than make someone else’s story, but most are just as happy to make any story – as long as it’s good, or the pay is high.

So, filmmakers, don’t feel like you must also be the story creator. You’re a storyteller, for sure. No doubt about it, but you don’t have to tell a story that you created. Better that you should find someone who has the same passion facing the blank page that you have facing an eager cast & crew.

That someone might be a screenwriter, sure, but many screenwriters have the same answer to the “why did you get into this business?” question as you do. So many of them – even some very good ones – want to make movies more than they want to tell stories. If you ever do take a meeting with a screenwriter, tell them you’re not going to make the movie, you’re just going to publish their story. See how they react.

Novelists, on the other hand, are 100 percent pure storytellers. Their passion is what they’ve put on the page. Your turning it into a living, breathing thing is wonderful, mostly because it means more people will be exposed to their story. And, let’s not lie, they’d also be into increased royalties, participation deals, etc.

But their passion is the page, not the stage.

Now to novelists:

Men and women of letters. There is no way around it, filmmaking – as both a business and an art – is a social endeavor. Film sets have been accurately compared to a royal court. Navigating them can be hazardous to your health.

Still, the best way to meet filmmakers is not when they are dressed nice, celebrating the premiere of their film at a festival, but when they are covered in blood, sweat, and tears while working as a Third Assistant Director on someone else’s project.

Why? The filmmaker who has just premiered has two years of trying to sell that movie to the public before they can even think about their next film.

They also have a slew of people who have been pitching them like crazy, and they’ve burned all their favors on that first film. The second one will be ten times more difficult to launch.

Meanwhile, the hardworking crew of that film are owed some favors. If they want to step up to the plate as a producer/director, their chance is next. You just have to hope they didn’t answer “to tell my stories,” to the question of why they got into this business.

But how do you get on the set? How do you get to meet filmmakers when all they do is work on each other’s projects and go to festivals?

That’s easy. Every film needs people. From extras to PAs (Production Assistants), filmmaking is social because it takes so many people make them. And there’s more good news.

Because of the availability of cheap, high-quality, digital cameras, you don’t have to live in Los Angeles or New York to find a filmmaking community. Chances are, there is a filmmaking group in whatever town you live in.

Hit the internet, find them, and join up. If you do live in a filmmaking hub, and you can afford to take a low-paying job, sign up to be an extra. The pay is terrible for non-union (and the work isn’t readily available for union), but you’re usually fed well and it’s a lot of fun.

But what do you do once you’re on the set, or in a meeting of filmmakers at a group? First, don’t try to be what you’re not! The industry is full of those people.

Don’t tell anyone you’re a screenwriter. Everyone is a screenwriter. They need another screenwriter like the Sahara needs more sand.

Just tell the truth. You’re a novelist. You don’t know anything about filmmaking, but you’d like to meet some filmmakers to maybe talk about some projects. I think you’ll find filmmakers think novelists are as mysterious as you think filmmakers are.

Okay, novelists have a way to meet filmmakers, but how do filmmakers meet novelists?
Filmmakers. Novelists write. They also read. If you’re going to reach out to a novelist, you’re going to need to read them.

But your buying all the best sellers and slogging your way through them until you find a writer you like is just like a novelist trying to network with a major filmmaker. The big novelists don’t need your uber-indie eager help with their major works.

So what’s the answer?

Short stories. Anthologies. You can get to know ten to fifteen authors reading an anthology in the time it takes to read one novel. And if you reach out to pretty much any author with, “I read your short story…” you will immediately have their attention.

Short stories are like short films. They are a labor of love. Sure, they might also be a way of testing out an idea, or just getting something done, but just like your short films, they are gems that you never forget.

I often call Elephant’s Bookshelf Press the Sun Records of publishing. Just the way Sam Phillips discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, etc. Matt Sinclair has published Steven Carman, R.C. Lewis, Mindy McGinnis, and many more.

Are they as big in the writing world as Sam’s discoveries are in music? No. Not yet. If they were, you wouldn’t be able to work with them. But they are just as talented.

Filmmakers, if you’re looking for a story to tell, anthologies are a good place to start. Roller Ball, Running Man, Stand By Me, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Brokeback Mountain, Children of the Corn, and so many more feature films started life as short fiction. Fire up the Kindle app on your phone, download some anhologies, and get reading. EBP is a good place to start. When you find a writer you like, reach out. You never know what beautiful friendship might begin.

R.S. Mellette is the author of Billy Bobble Makes a Magic Wand and Billy Bobble and the Witch Hunt, both from Elephant’s Bookshelf Press. He also has written several short stories that have appeared in EBP anthologies.

3 things I’ve learned about book marketing

Business of writing, Marketing, Publishing, Uncategorized, , , ,

In the nearly six years since I created Elephant’s Bookshelf Press, one of the things I’ve had to work on the most has been my book marketing skills. Mind you, since part of what I’d reported on in my day job as a journalist was nonprofit marketing and fundraising, I thought I was starting my company with a solid knowledge base.

Perhaps I was, but it wasn’t enough.

When I was reporting on nonprofit marketing, Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist. The World Wide Web was still in its first decade. Email marketing was in its infancy. Direct mail was king.

Oh my, how the marketing and advertising world has changed!

These days, if you’ve launched an ebook and/or a paperback, you need to be able to boost the book’s visibility all the time. Building awareness requires a well-stocked toolkit. If you’re like me, with a spouse and young kids and a full-time job that keeps me away from them for several hours every day, that toolkit needs to have everything handy and charged up.

I want to share a few ideas about tools I’m using now that are either relatively new or new to me.

To be honest and open, I don’t have any affiliate relationships with these groups (well, I just created my Amazon affiliate relationship this week, but I don’t exactly know how to use that tool yet and I don’t think my mere mentioning of it will do anything that puts money into my account). But down the road, I might do that kind of thing. Again, building affiliate relationships is a potential tool, but I’ll discuss that sometime down the road when I have a better idea what I’m talking about.

Anyway, to the tools: One: Advertising. This may seem obvious, but a lot of authors don’t advertise, and at least as many don’t advertise enough. Honestly, I’m not advertising enough either.

But where to advertise? Sometimes the choice is made for you. For the latest EBP book, Lost Wings, we just launched a countdown campaign, and with it, an ad through Free Kindle Books and Tips. I’ve advertised through that side before, but part of the reason I chose it this time is because it allows books with few reviews to be advertised there. At the time I scheduled the ad, we only had two. I really appreciate that, since so many EBP books are anthologies, which often don’t receive many reviews. And while Lost Wings has nine reviews as I type this, and I have additional ads scheduled for later, I’m sure I’ll use FKBT again in the future.

Two: AMS ads. Yes, this is another type of ad, but it’s inherently different from a book blog ad. It targets different people (people searching for books, rather than readers who signed up for a list to get book ideas pushed to them). I’ve been playing around with these a lot in 2017 and have had some spectacular successes and some total failures. So far, most of the ads have been related to keywords. But I’m experimenting now with the product display ads. Again, I’ll talk more about those down the road once I have some experienced to speak from. But if your books are being sold on Amazon, AMS ads are a must in my opinion. Let’s face it, Amazon is the biggest online bookstore in the world. But if no one can find your book when they’re looking for something, then you owe it to your audience to bring it to their attention.

Three: KDP Rocket. I’ll probably sound like a paid shill, but I’m not. My approach to advertising changed as soon as I bought this product earlier this year. It has simplified my searching for keywords and enabled me to hone my selection process. I’ve learned how to improve the keywords I select for my books through Kindle — and the keywords I chose anywhere, for that matter — and I’ve started to rethink some of my book marketing overall. Once again, I’ll talk about that more down the road, but to give you a sense of why I’m so pleased with KDP Rocket, let me share this:

Our anthology Tales from the Bully Box was released in 2014, and it did ok when we launched, and then it quickly languished. I tried various things to bring it back to life, but they didn’t work.

One of the authors of a story there, Sarah Tregay (who also did the beautiful cover for Bully Box — and Lost Wings, too!) told me she’d been told good things about the book by a friend of hers who was using it in a school setting — which was what it was made for.

That made me smile, but I wasn’t quite sure how to take advantage of it. Then I learned about KDP Rocket, looked into it, and ended up buying it. The first book I tried it on was Bully Box. Within weeks, my AMS keyword ad campaign resulted in doubling the sales of the previous year in a single month.

I realize we weren’t talking about major sales of Bully Box in 2016, but I continued with the AMS ads and using KDP Rocket to craft the keyword selection further. And now Bully Box is the most successful paperback book in the relatively short history of EBP! We’re also paying more for advertising than we ever have, but when they result in success, they’re clearly worth it.

What are you using to boost sales of your books and finding success with? Please share!

Buzz vs Word-of-Mouth: What Hollywood Could Learn From Publishing

Business of writing, Guest posts, Marketing, , , ,

This post appeared originally on From the Write Angle in February, 2013. Gaining at least a basic understanding of marketing will help you identify and target work to your audience. In this post, R.S. Mellette offers a snapshot of his experience with buzz and word of mouth from the film industry. Shared with permission of the author, whose two novels, Billy Bobble Makes a Magic Wand (2014) and Billy Bobble and the Witch Hunt (2016) were published by Elephant’s Bookshelf Press.

Buzz vs Word-of-Mouth: What Hollywood Could Learn From Publishing
by R.S. Mellette

I moderated a conference of film industry professors a while back, and when one of them said that Hollywood relies heavily on word-of-mouth marketing, I laughed.

I couldn’t help myself. Here is an industry that considers a 20% or 30% drop in sales a success! That’s not word-of-mouth. Or if it is, good words are not being spoken.

Interestingly, the Hollywood insiders on the panel thought I was the crazy one for doing a spit-take with the Kool Aid they were serving. But of course, none of them had theatre or publishing experience.

In those disciplines, word-of-mouth marketing means sales INCREASE with time, not drop. A play that is worth the time, money, and effort of going to see will build an audience. A book worth the read will see an increase in sales.

In Hollywood, my filmmaking brothers and sisters have forgotten the difference between Buzz and Word-of-Mouth. So, let’s take a look at them side-by-side.

Buzz: “I want to see that movie,” says one friend to another before it premieres. “Yes,” says the friend, “I’ve heard it’s good.”

Word-Of-Mouth: “I saw the best movie this weekend, you should see it.”

In writing, we call that passive vs. active voice. In court, it’s called a firsthand account vs. hearsay.

Marketing generates buzz. The product itself creates word-of-mouth.

Why is that a distinction worth discussing? Because buzz owes only a passing fealty to the quality of the product. Producers in Hollywood will actually judge a script on “trailer beats,” meaning juicy stuff they can put in the preview to create buzz. A script that tells a good story but has no trailer beats will be passed over in favor of another script that is more easily marketable.

Compare this to the world of self-publishing today. Sure, sure, there is a sub-culture of writers trying to get good reviews—or spam their competition with bad ones—to increase buzz. There is nothing wrong with an honest pursuit of good buzz, but the runaway hits in the self-publishing world come almost exclusively from word-of-mouth marketing.

And word-of-mouth marketing is entirely dependent on the quality of the work. It is first-person, active, marketing. One friend telling another, “I enjoyed that, and I think you’ll like it, too.”

What does this product-oriented marketing technique look like on the sales charts, graphs, and tables? That’s easy. No drop off. Sales go up the longer the product is available. And when the same people create a new product, their sales start higher because they have become a trusted brand. As long as they keep up the quality, then their work will generate its own buzz.

The opposite is also true. How many of us have been fooled so many times by a great preview for a lousy film that we no longer trust the studios? Like so much of the rest of American Industry, studios have lost sight of long term success in favor of instant gratification. They have confused buzz with word-of-mouth.

So the work suffers. We, as consumers, suffer. And worst of all, we artists who must try to make a living in this environment suffer.

R.S. Mellette is an author and filmmaker. Prior to the Billy Bobble series of novels, Mellette had Sci-Fi short stories published by Elephant’s Bookshelf Press in the anthologies: The Fall: Tales from the Apocalypse, Spring Fevers and Summer’s Edge. Mellette is an Associate Director of Dances With Films (one of MovieMaker Magazine’s top 25 coolest film festivals in the world). He wrote and directed the multi-festival winner, Jacks or Better. He also wrote the first web-to-television intellectual property, “The Xena Scrolls,” for Universal Studio’s Xena: Warrior Princess. On Blue Crush and Nutty Professor II he served as script coordinator. He’s acted in Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Star Trek: Enterprise, Days of Our Lives, Too Young The Hero, and countless stage productions across the U.S.

The business of being a writer

Business of writing, Publishing, writing

Not long after I’d graduated from college, I had a phone conversation with a longtime friend. He was heading to med school and was on a path that would lead to his becoming a prominent surgeon. Ever since we were kids, he talked about how he intended to become a doctor. Even as he earned an engineering degree in college, he knew his destiny lay in medicine, and he really believed he would become a surgeon. It’s what he always wanted to do.

I was also certain I wanted to become a writer, and I really believed I would be a novelist. My friend was amazed at my goals of becoming an author. To him, it would be more sensible for me to pursue a career that would be more lucrative and enable me to write on the side. And sometimes when I look at my bank statements and bills, I wonder if perhaps he was right. But that night, after he asked how long it would take to write a novel, I said, “Well, if I just write a page a day, by the end of the year, I’d have a novel.”

The logic of the statement — which was just off the top of my head — surprised me then, and to a degree it still does. The answer encapsulated much of what would lead me to become the writer I am today; it’s my job. I write most every day. You can say it’s a discipline, but I just look at it as what I do. And when I’m not physically writing or typing, I’m often thinking about characters and story arcs.

Frankly, it took me a long time to finish my first novel, which I trunked years ago (though trunks can be opened…) In the years out of college, I spent most of my writing time on short stories, and the novels I began quickly died on the vine. Back then, I spent more time writing songs than novels.

I’m not working on a novel at the moment, either. And if I’m honest with myself, I would say I haven’t worked on one of my own seriously since I created Elephant’s Bookshelf Press. I have only so much time away from work, and I spend what I can with my wife and children. Anyone who’s seen me on the train heading home knows I’m always on my laptop. That’s where the bulk of EBP takes shape: reading stories, editing novels, putting together media packages, recording and analyzing data, and all the other administrative responsibilities I need to address to maintain and build my little publishing house.

To me, being a professional writer starts with those two things: dedicating yourself to your craft – writing every day – and taking a business approach to your craft. It’s your job, after all.
Over the years, I’ve also learned the power of planning. I’m a believer in setting goals – even New Year’s resolutions – and reviewing the progress I make regularly. It may seem like a simple thing, but I’d be lost without a calendar. Yet, even though I write my plans down and review them, I’m still shocked when the fourth quarter of the year begins and I’m still scrambling to finish things that are weeks behind.

Recently, my friend Mindy McGinnis posted a blog about her schedule and all the work that goes into a typical day in her writing career. And this is someone who has a half-dozen novels published, including the recently released This Darkness Mine. It just goes to show that, no matter how much “success” we experience in our writing careers, life is still packed with a lot of unexciting but necessary busy work.

Now that we’re in the home stretch of 2017, what are you doing to prepare your writing business for 2018? Have you found any answers or solutions to the problems that have plagued you this year? What do you need in the new year to accomplish your goals? Maybe we can find a way to help each other. One of my goals in 2018 is to share more. (A goal my daughters have suggested.)

I’m looking forward to sharing with you.