Going Banksy
So. Marketing. It is always interesting. And as funny and entertaining as the memes and billboard photos are, I can’t go out and get a damn billboard. I’m already freakishly out of pocket publishing the book just covering ISBNs, conversions, editing, cover work, art, you name it, I spent it. But. The book needs to get out there. This is where Banksy comes in. I love street art. I love the concept of going out and just stenciling up art all the hell over. And, while I don’t expect most people to be masters at glue, paint or stencils? I figure anyone can print an Avery label and slap that baby on the wall in a Starbucks restroom. Yay! So — Here is your mission, should you choose to accept it: This is a PDF Template for guerrilla marketing stickers. All you need, to use this, is a box of Avery Labels #5164 [6 labels per sheet, 3 1/3” by 4” labels] and you can print 600 stickers and go all Banksy and slap those bad boy stickers on walls, tables, chairs, wherever, whenever. The stickers do not have to be perfect. This is guerrilla stuff. Just as long as the title, url, and author name are in there, you are golden. It would be funny as hell if these things started turning up all over the place from Canada to California to Paraguay.
Bonus Points: If you take a photo of yourself with the sticker and post it on the Facebook Page, you get total bonus points. [You can wear a ski mask, Jodi.] And you go up on the interactive map. Yay! Or, if you spot a sticker? Take a photo of it and post it on the Facebook page. That totally works too. [Be sure and attach date spotted and location.] Ready? Set? Go! [You are going to hit the real page on the site for the map it won’t translate here.]
•Yes there will be prizes. Yay! •There is no cut off date for Banksy frenzy. •Extra points for creativity but hey, nobody do anything life threatening.
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“Buy this book. Just do it. You’ll thank me for it later.”
~ Christie Leblanc, The Single Screenwriter
Guerrilla Tactis: Interview With Author & Screenwriter Max Adams
Guerrilla Tactics: Interview With Author & Screenwriter Max Adams
(December 10, 2012)
~ by Nancy Bilyeau
In the middle of attempting to write my first screenplay, I bought a paperback called The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide: Or, Guerrilla Meeting Tactics and Other Acts of War, by Max Adams. It was a fast, smart read, very funny, with an insider’s wisdom about how to get off the ground as a screenwriter.
Max, I learned, had won the two hottest screenwriting contests—the Nicholl Fellowship and Austin Film Festival—in the same year, sold a spec script for real money that made it onto the big screen, and scored a whole bunch of studio assignments. She also taught writing, and so when I saw her name in the faculty list for Gotham Writer’s Workshop online, I jumped.
Max has taught me an incredible amount on writing visually, creating characters and plotting. Before I took a swerve into fiction, I got pretty far with the Nicholl myself, reaching semi-finalist twice, and getting some producers to read my scripts. Who knows? Someday one of those stories could be at a movie screen near you.
Now Max is back with an updated version of her book The New Screenwriter’s Survival Guide. This is not one of those cases where the author wrote a few new paragraphs for the Introduction. Max overhauled her book, making it even more useful and on target. Chapters range from “What You Really Get Paid” to “Writer Speak Versus Mogul Speak.”
I chased her down–no easy feat–and persuaded her to submit to an interview on her new book. I’ve met Max in person as well as participated in her invite-only online workshops, and, well, Max has a conversational style like no other, one I wanted the blogosphere to experience. As you can see from this photo, she’s not shy. What you can’t see is she swears by killer shoes –
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“Before you even think of marketing your script, read this book and change your screenwriting life.”
~ David Trottier, author, The Screenwriter’s Bible
Book link: http://ow.ly/fRuFr
We have book. And the book is —- Shipping. Yay! The eBook for iPad and Nook shipped out today for all pre-orders. It will be a few days before it shows up on the Barnes & Noble and iBook sites — they are loading but there is an approval and waiting process so —- If you want the book right now, no waiting, go to the book’s website and order the book direct. And it will magically appear in your inbox before anyone else out there even has a clue. (You are so smart.)
The Kindle version of the book for Amazon is still in production, I am saying that will be coming out on or before December 15th, just to be safe. But if everything goes the way it is supposed to, that is actually shipping Tuesday. Again, it takes a few days for the book, once loaded on Amazon, to show up for sale on Amazon, but you can jump that fence by (tell me if you have heard this before) going to the book’s website and ordering the book direct. In which case, it will come to you in your email inbox. Yay!
There is no hard copy book. That is a 2013 project. In the meantime, go get the book. Yay!
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Emailed out the first pre-ordered books in iBooks and Nook this morning. Yay!
Kindle is still in production. Stay frosty. It should be here on or before December 15.
Win a free copy of The New Screenwriter’s Survival Guide — click the photo to find out how.
The New Screenwriter’s Survival Guide
The New Screenwriter’s Survival Guide web page is up. Ooh la la. Why, you ask, does the book have a page before it is in print? Planning, my ninjas, planning. The page needs to be around long enough to get picked up by search engines and propagate so when the eBooks come out in November it has presence on the web.
Hence all this frenzy to get the art work done and the page up even though I think eBook editing and release will still take another month and a half.
Self publishing. Who knew it was such an adventure?
Go see the :::book’s new website:::.
Just Say No to the Answering Machine
One of my pet peeves in scripts is answering machines. There I will be zooming along through a story, then a character hears the phone ring and an answering machine picks up the call and the character listens to the message in a voice over.
Seriously?
The answering machine voice over is an old convention and I guess people are so used to it in older films people just toss it out there without thinking about it. But do you know anyone who actually owns and uses an old fashioned speak aloud answering machine? Okay, Aunt Mathilda, but she is 93. (Who are you trying to kid? Aunt Mathilda still uses a rotary phone and that answering machine someone bought her for Christmas in 1985 is still in its box stashed artfully in the garage.) Who else? Anyone? Anyone?
Half the people I know don’t even have land lines. They only use cell phones – which have message drop boxes – and mostly they don’t even use the message drop boxes they just text.
Just say no to the answering machine.
Screenwriting Tip #1107
If you find yourself writing a “connecting scene” to string two dramatic sequences together? Cut it. If a scene is devoid of conflict and doesn’t affect the protagonist’s emotional state, you don’t need it.
:::amen:::
eBook vs. Non-eBook
So, starting a dialogue —-
With eBook conversion peeps to put the new edition of The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide out electronically. Here’s a question. See I’m thinking go electronic first, wait on hard copy. But how many people are going to be annoyed they cannot get the book hard copy? People have told me they are saving space on a shelf for the new edition. What if there is no hard copy, what if it is electronic or bust? Let’s test the waters here. When the new edition of The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide comes out, if you are planning on getting it, how were you planning on getting it? Kindle? iBook? Paperback? Hard cover? Which is your preference?
:::hit the poll:::
