Script To Novel; Help for the Almost-Always Jilted Screenwriter – Part Three
by Lee Tidball
Once you’ve finished novelizing your screenplay, you then must decide, as all novelists must do these days, which of the many publishing options available today you’ll decide to go with to get your story out to an audience. Self-publishing has become much less expensive and more accepted by readers in general these days, and does give you complete control over your work. However, book-sellers still are not completely on with self-publishing (especially traditional bookstores), and distributing your book could be a challenge. And self-publishing is, as it says, self-publishing, where you pay for everything and assume all the risks. You could also send your manuscript out to agents and editors in the hopes of getting it accepted for representation and/or publication by one of the “traditional” publishers like Random House or HarperCollins or any number of their various subsidiaries and imprints, etc. This would give you legitimacy in the publishing world, print and ebook versions of your work distributed in a variety of ways, and maybe even some money trickling in through royalties that would come in a couple times a year. However, you’d probably have to wait 1-2 years for your work to hit the shelves, as traditional publishers have that much backlog that they’re constantly working through. To me, neither option sounds very attractive, especially when you add in the factor that, in either case, you’ll have to do virtually all the marketing yourself.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. That would be the “new media” small press, a legitimate publisher who takes advantage of the same options that self-publishing offers for production (ebook and print-on-demand technology) to make a product, and then uses the myriad of Internet-based options now available for distribution to get their books out to the world. They select the works they wish to publish according to whatever criterion they have, just as the editors for a larger “traditional” publisher would do, assume all the costs of publication, negotiate royalties with you (which are normally huge compared to that of traditional publishers), and together you and they market your work. Then both you and they share in the profits, which can be considerable if your book sells well. The great thing about these small presses is that they are becoming more and more numerous all the time, and they’re not tied to the traditional publishing system that has sought for decades to dominate book-publishing. Yet your book is acceptable to virtually any book-seller, review magazine, library, or professional organization for authors as a “legitimately” published book, which aides your marketing efforts immeasurably. Talk about the best of both worlds.
So, in summary, for frustrated screenwriters who can no longer wait while Hollywood dithers to share their stories, novelization, especially through the outlet of new media small press publishing, is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative and one you should seriously consider in your quest to bridge the often yawning gap between your screen story and your audience.
“Imagine the unimaginable.”
That was the mantra of young prodigy Hector Chevas’s mentor in architectural design, Gellini. But even Gellini couldn’t imagine the horrors that his prize student and adopted son would fill Suburbia’s new Heartland Mall with to wreak revenge on those who killed Gellini and murdered Hector’s only friends. “Black Friday” was never blacker.
But Hector couldn’t imagine that, in the middle of his deathly rampage, an “angel” from his past would re-appear into his life; wild-child Janey, whose life he’d saved years before, and who’d never forgotten her promise to “always love him…for reals.” But was that love strong enough now to learn the unimaginable truth; to call Hector’s “dead” soul back to life and resurrect him from his mad plunge into oblivion?
MALLED is a story filled with tragedy, terror, raw emotion, unspeakable horrors, and, above all, the awesome power of ferocious, undying love. Go for it. Get into it. Dare to “imagine the unimaginable.”
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Genre – NeoGothic Horror / Thriller
Rating – R for violence & language
More details about the author & the book
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