The going gets tougher!

Anyone taken a look at the WGAw list of California-based agents lately?

Last time I looked was a month ago when I searched through for all agencies with the words New Writers OK beside their name. I wrote to all four.

Decided it was time to follow up today and guess what, all but one of them has changed to Letter of Intro required. And the remaining one sounds a bit shaky when you get through to their answering machine.

Maybe I'll have to decide that Sweden is east of the Missouri and try WGAe. I was convinced it was west.

Any other suggestions anyone?

Hook up with an attorney in LA who will do your queries for you.

How many lawyers will send out queries for free? Or this is just another "exciting" opportunity for us beleagured spec screenwriters to send money to the poor people in LA?

Sorry, Bill. I used to help a couple of producers try to find certain types of scripts for their buyers. Recently, they started charging script reading and evaluation fees. So I bailed.

This looks like a growing trend. And I don't want to be left behind. Therefore, I'm thinking of starting a new online screenwriting class: "Raising Money to Sell Your Spec Screenplay." I believe $1,500 ought to be just about right for a two-hour, chat-room session. However, enrollment likely will have to be limited to the first 3,000 applicants.

:rollin







:rollin

Bill, you have any lawyers that you know will take on query clients?

James,

Send queries to all or most of the agents/agencies on the list. Ignore their stated submission policy. It's a query letter for chris-sakes. If they're serious about not looking at anything, they'll just toss it in the garbage. But you never know, you might luck up and catch them on the right day with the right script. It happens.

The first script we ever cold queried got requested by Gersh and an established producer with a long list of studio credits who stated directly in their request letter that "we normally don't accept unagented material but your query sounded intriguing" yada, yada, yada... Nothing ever came of either of those requests, but at least they looked at the script.

Or you can try getting a producer(s) interested in your script first and then query the agents again with this new development. That's how we got an agent to rep our second script--hooked a producer first and then sent out a new set of queries to agents telling them where the script was being read via this producer etc. One agent took the bait and he's helped us earn over five-figures in option money on that project.

The goings always tough, but there's a @#%$-load of managers and producers looking for good scripts, and one of these contacts/connections can be your stepping-stone to the next level up.

Good Luck

Thanks for the advice, Boski62. I needed that. It felt like having the rug pulled from under you.

you really do need to just query whomever you want, regardless of their "submission policy." also, use the scriptsales.com agents and managers list as there are several wga signatory agents whose contact information is on the scriptsales site but not on the wga's.

also, be sure to address every query letter to a specific person. don't just write a single to whom it may concern letter, print out thrity copies and mail them.

Re: lawyers - No, I do not expect a lawyer to query for free. They are not agents. But if you have a product that is exceptionally good, and an attorney agrees, he can get past the "no unsolicited material" barrier. This is especially effective in the television world.

Yes, I have done this. No, I didn't sell but was given the opportunity to submit other material. This has been my experience. Yours may vary.

The point is that there is more than one way to get in the door.

Thanks for the response, Bill. I'm not trying to be a butt-pain here, but I'm just increasingly sensitive to the rising costs of trying to be a spec screenwriter. (The first--and last--time I tried dealing with a few LA lawyers about handling my screenplays, I found their rates staggering. And the moment I sucked in my breath, they hung up on me.)

Outfits such as Crescendo may be hailing their new business model. But the basic business model for spec screenwriting has not changed, and it is little different from the business model for growing vegetables and selling them door to door. You create a product and start hawking it. It costs money to create the product, and you don't make a cent until you sell it. (That's a simplification, of course. People generally don't pay to option buckets of tomatoes or ears of corn, at least not in Mississippi.)

Against this backdrop of making zip, zero and nada from a spec script until it is sold, the spec screenwriter now is facing an expanding plethora of people demanding fees, including producers and managers who used to take queries for free but have become "$cript con$ultant$." Even though they want and need new scripts to produce or market, they now say they "don't have time" and "can't afford" to look at what we have--unless we pay them. (Nobody paid us for our time and effort as we created the scripts, but obviously that's well beside the point.)

As other posters have noted, it really is getting tougher and tougher to sell scripts door to door, because of all of the gatekeepers that now have to be sneaked around or bribed, figuratively speaking (maybe literally speaking, too).

Increasingly, I (one spec screenwriter expressing one opinion) fear that much (but not al*) of the money we outsiders now spend on LA attorneys, LA script consultants, LA contests and LA whatevers is simply sucker money going to help support a certain number of LA lifestyles.

These days, it's easy to spend spend thousands of dollars on trying to sell one spec screenplay. (I recently heard of one wannabe screenwriter who has paid something like $25,000 to consultants that promise "access" to big stars.)

Truth be known, most of us could make a lot more money selling vegetables door to door. And we probably wouldn't even have to pay any gatekeepers to let us into the neighborhood.

To be more precise, I would only use the services of an attorney for a query if I were targeting a specific buyer, such a movie of the week television producer like HBO. I do not advocate hiring a lawyer to do blind queries all over town. That would likely be throwing money away.