Multiple Marketing Channels to Help Sell a Script

Many fledgling screenwriters ultimately reach a day when they feel exhausted from writing and submitting scripts to as many producers and production companies as they can locate, without any response. It can feel like fishing in the ocean for a week without as much as a nibble from fish below. Well, while trying to sell a script, perhaps using only the shotgun approach to connecting with buyers is not the best avenue. Think about expanding your avenue into a boulevard or even highway, by tapping multiple marketing channels. While waiting around for that nibble of interest, spend some time getting your story before other sets of eyes. Have more than one line in the water.

For example Brunonia Barry of Salem, Massachusetts, once moved to Hollywood to try to improve her odds at selling a script. She spent years working on other writers’ scripts, and never sold her own work. She finally gave up in 1995, only to return five years later to begin writing a novel, “The Lace Reader” – and chose to spend the money and time to have it self-published. The result was development of a buzz about the script, followed by a literary auction where the book (and a future one) was sold for more than $2 million. Now she is getting interest from Hollywood for a screenplay deal. Self-publishing to get your story and your name out in public is but one way to help sell a script through alternative channels of marketing.

Writing and Selling a Script is a Business

You always should remember that script writing and selling a script is a business. You are creating a product with intent to sell for a profit. Marketing is essential to most successful businesses, and few rely on a single mode, such as mail marketing. If you are only submitting scripts by mail to prospects, you are limiting your marketing to one tactic. You should think about utilizing other tactics and reaching out into other channels. Sometimes simple brand marketing, while not selling a script directly, will broaden your name recognition and convince a reader to read your entire story. Every little bit can help.

Other avenues can include Internet channels, such as a blog, or pages on MySpace or even YouTube, where short video promos of your story can be posted. Diablo Cody, before writing and selling 2007’s successful “Juno,” attracted attention to herself as a writer by writing a memoir about her roughly one-year stint as a stripper. Later she supplemented the buzz via her blog, “Darling Girl,” later changed into “Pussy Ranch.” She also wrote for alternative and entertainment publications. All this helped her market her brand, which is her name, and her product, her written work. It’s a great example of brand marketing to help sell a script.

More Marketing Tactics to Help Sell a Script

Today’s technology and self-publishing options present new marketing opportunities toward selling a script. Remember that there are a multitude of marketing tools out there, including your own website, or having business cards and ensuring those business cards will be effective when you meet Hollywood insiders. Think about attending as many free movie screenings as time allows, and do not forget to give out as many business cards as people will accept. You know screenings often are attended by important industry people. It cannot hurt your chances toward selling a script to further get your name out there.

Attend industry events, even if you have to drive or even fly to get to some. Industry trade publications are chock full of special industry events. There also is opportunity for free public relations, such as submitting a letter to the editor of an industry publication, which again brands your name as a writer. Or, call and ask a publication to write reviews of movies. Just make sure they will give you a byline. All this is not necessarily thinking out of the box. But indeed it can be thinking outside the box in terms of the motion picture or television industry.