New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

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  • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

    Originally posted by FranklinLeonard View Post
    Here's what you can know for certain: Today's announcement results in a lower profit margin for us. We've gone from making 50% of the revenue on each evaluation to roughly 47%.
    That's a really benevolent way to frame it for yourself, Franklin. Like you are making LESS money. When you make statements like this, it just makes me think that you think writers are stupid.

    You've gone from making 25 dollars per read (the reader got the other 25) to now making 35 dollars per read (the reader gets 40) for not doing any more work than you did before.

    You (meaning the BL) are gaining an additional 10 dollars per read.

    The circuitry of your brain must be a sight to behold, dude. Makes me laugh. Not sure if it's at you or with you, though.

    I'm out. Goodnight and good luck.
    Last edited by figment; 04-15-2016, 03:55 PM. Reason: ETA: fix spelling

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    • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

      For fvcks sake, quit complaining already. It's Econ 101 - when demand exceeds supply, you raise prices. If that means that some of you decide it's not worth the cost then you're just performing your function in the marketplace by reducing demand.

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      • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

        Originally posted by figment View Post
        That's a really benevolent way to frame it for yourself, Franklin. Like you are making LESS money. When you make statements like this, it just makes me think that you think writers are stupid.

        You've gone from making 25 dollars per read (the reader got the other 25) to now making 35 dollars per read (the reader gets 40) for not doing any more work than you did before.

        You (meaning the BL) are gaining an additional 10 dollars per read.

        The circuitry of your brain must be a site to behold, dude. Makes me laugh. Not sure if it's at you or with you, though.

        I'm out. Goodnight and good luck.
        The circuitry of my brain on this question is built on basic microeconomics. I'll provide quick refresher for you:

        Revenue is irrelevant. Profit margin is. Our profit margin has gone down.

        Let's look a bit closer at this reality. Like most products, I think we can assume that the demand for evaluations is at least somewhat elastic with respect to price, meaning that demand goes down when the price goes up.

        Our price increase means that we can expect the demand for evaluations to go down slightly.

        Let's say we sold 900 evaluations per month (I use these numbers as examples because they're nice and round), that would mean that our revenue would be $45K and our profit would be $22.5K. Now, when the price goes up, we can reasonably expect the number of evaluations sold per month to go down. Let's say it goes down to 600 evaluations per month. That would mean that our revenue would be the same, but our profit would only be $21K.

        Now it's certainly possible that demand is more inelastic than that, which would mean that our absolute profit would go up, but still, the profit margin would still go down compared with the previous pricing structure.

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        • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

          26 days and I still have not received an evaluation. I paid for two thinking one would come earlier and perhaps one later. Still nothing. I'm going to update this daily on this thread. Kind of like when the hostages were held in Iran.

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          • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

            Day 27... and still nothing

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            • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

              Originally posted by CrissCross View Post
              Day 27... and still nothing
              Hmmm, did you at least get a free month of hosting?

              Maybe we should place bets on when your review will come in. I'm taking lucky number 30.

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              • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                I posted about my last evaluation and it came in right on the 4th week nearly to the hour. Pretty sure you would've had a warning come up to say that the 3 weeks was going to be exceeded due to demand when you paid for the evaluation.

                I personally don't get the anger over the price rises because A: It's a business, not a charity and B: It's Franklin Leonard's business and he can do with it whatever he wants. I've never seen the owner of a company so active within the community to address concerns or feedback so you've gotta give him that, right?

                In saying that if the notes stay the same basic format that will be a little disappointing. I can go to Screenplay Readers and get pages of coverage instead of a couple of paragraphs of feedback and to be honest even though I got pretty butt hurt by their coverage a couple of times after a back and forth between them I realized I was being a dick and what they had said was quite relevant. Their readers aren't anonymous and I'm pretty sure people in the industry know who they are. The same could no doubt be said for other coverage services on this forum and many others that aren't.

                I scraped in to get another $50 evaluation only a few days before the price rise hit but I dunno if I'll keep using the Black List because I was using it as a cheaper alternative to get a "first impression" of my script. I got a 7 on my pilot and after digesting the criticism on the characters I added a couple of little scenes and changed a couple of reactions which I felt added to the overall conflict and tension, we'll see how I go.

                Overall I'll probably just go back to Screenplay Readers because if I'm paying $97 USD which at the moment is $126 AUD for me I might as well get the pages of notes and feedback. Pretty sure if I get a recommend or even a consider from them and mention that in a query letter I've got as much chance of a read as I do through the Black List.

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                • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                  I didn't get an e mail about the 3 week evaluation time period being blown past. So I sent an e mail asking. I didn't get a response until my second e mail when they offered a free month of hosting. Listen, the guy can do whatever he wants with his business. The only thing that bothers me is not delivering what he's promising people. If you go to a steak house and it promises the best steak in LA and the thing is like a rubber band then we have a problem. When The Blacklist promises a 3 week turnaround the doesn't deliver I think there's a flaw in the business. If there are too many people wanting reviews and evaluations you see this coming and react accordingly.

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                  • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                    When you purchased the evaluation a warning comes up saying that there's a longer than normal wait. If it didn't, well that sucks, but that's what happened to me.

                    That's another thing, 3 weeks vs 24-72 hours for the service I mentioned in my previous post is a long time to wait. For the same price......

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                    • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                      The Blacklist pay site was flawed from inception. One of its biggest flaws was to pay readers the ridiculously low amount of $25 per evaluation, while at the same time relying on evaluations as the engine that makes the site go.

                      There may have been a surge of excitement and instant success, but over time a poor economic plan catches up with any business enterprise. Franklin mentions that demand for evaluations is greater than their capacity at this time.

                      Franklin's recent course of action in raising reader pay plus bonuses makes it evident that lack of reader productivity, motivation and/or high turnover of rate is a contributing factor to the BL not being able to keep up with demand. Some of us argued all the way back when the pay site first opened that $25 was not enough to pay someone for consistently high quality reads. Looks like we were right.

                      It's all about motivation. Reading crappy scripts all day at a prestigious company as a way to get a foot in the door might be enough motivation to keep young readers committed. But Blacklist readers? What's their motivation? Money? Probably not for long at $25 per script if they want to eat, which probably contributed to a high turnover rate. Will $40 per script plus bonuses (motivation) be the magic number? It's still very low. I made more freelancing over ten years ago and even while reading for a small contest where I didn't have to write full coverage. Is there this pool of "qualified" readers out there unwilling to read scripts at $25, but who are going to jump at the chance to read at $40? Time will tell.

                      The need for the BL to lowball reader pay stems from another economic flaw, in which the BL provides a script vetting service for industry pros, but refuses to charge industry pros for the service they are providing to them. The BL tries to fund the entire operation from aspiring writers, most of whom will never benefit from the service. Instead of charging industry pros a subscription fee, prices will likely continue to rise on the writer side without adding value of any kind. Hosting fees will be going up next.

                      Why won't the BL ever charge industry pros for the service? Quite simply because industry pros are business minded people who would never pay for something selling mere hopes, dreams, and chances at finding great script. Aspiring writers, on the other hand, can't wait to throw their money away on anything offering even the slightest hope of achieving their dreams. Writers should be more business minded when it comes to spending their money just like the industry pros are. That way less people will be able to take advantage of aspiring writers by selling them false hopes and dreams.

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                      • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                        Originally posted by mgwriter View Post
                        Why won't the BL ever charge industry pros for the service? Quite simply because industry pros are business minded people who would never pay for something selling mere hopes, dreams, and chances at finding great script. Aspiring writers, on the other hand, can't wait to throw their money away on anything offering even the slightest hope of achieving their dreams. Writers should be more business minded when it comes to spending their money just like the industry pros are. That way less people will be able to take advantage of aspiring writers by selling them false hopes and dreams.
                        Good luck getting agents and managers to pay for anything. How many unsolicited and solicited queries do you think they get a day without even asking for them? That's just not going to happen.

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                        • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                          Originally posted by earthbound88
                          This was the largest issue I had when I used the Blacklist. The skills of the readers are of extremely poor quality which render the entire service largely useless. I don't believe that Franklin Leonard is really so naive as to believe the high praise he bestows on those reading for him. However, I understand from a business perspective that Franklin's not going to come out and say, "I know the reader's aren't good but we're trying to do better."
                          Far from naive. Based on over a decade of experience with notes of all kinds from all sources, I can say and have said confidently that our evaluations are among the best that you would get from any submission you could make to any comparable service.

                          Originally posted by earthbound88
                          In fact, the industry pros were charged at the start of the Blacklist, a fee that got dropped pretty quickly.
                          We charged in order to fund the building of the site without taking on additional investors that would require us to prioritize profit over impact. We ceased charging industry pros as soon as we launched the site to the public (October 15, 2012) so that there would be as many industry eyeballs on scripts submitted to the site as possible.

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                          • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                            Franklin, would you consider having an additional premium "Private Reader" service? Where you pay maybe double or triple for development notes. If the script gets an 8, then the writer has an option for the Blacklist site to recommend to their contacts and bypass hosting. That's for writers who might be skittish about having the script hosted.... and for a higher fee, the writer would get a faster turnaround and not worry about hosting, waiting for evaluations. If their script isn't good enough, then they don't have to worry about it having been hosted.

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                            • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                              Day 29. No Blacklist review yet

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                              • Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

                                Originally posted by CrissCross View Post
                                Day 29. No Blacklist review yet
                                Has it been assigned and downloaded by a reader yet?

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