Should I even bother writing screenplays?

I think you should continue writing if you get pleasure from writing. Period.

TV: http://ihatemydvr.blogspot.com
LOST:http://eyemsick.blogspot.com

Probably not, but that's no reason not to do it anyway. Everybody needs a hobby.

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There's no such thing as the establishment. Everyone knows that!

I don't think it's become any more difficult recently, it's always been difficult.

But what has become easier is self publishing novels & short stories through Amazon, and if you want to ditch the middle-man butt kissing thing and take your career into your own hands - that's a possibility. I know a bunch of screenwriters who are turning their busted specs into novels and doing pretty good with them on Amazon.

- Bill (last time I replied to a post they deleted the whole thread!)
Free Script Tips Every Day:
http://www.ScriptSecrets.Net

That's impressive, I would think given the attitude so many people have had about things like self-publishing it would be a great way to stay poor. I guess the times they are a-changin'.

I can't say how I feel about it. I've never been an elitist, but if you've ever watched a youtube video and heard someone say "without further to do" or "to the tenth degree" you can begin to gauge the value an external, editorial force can have on a piece of work, particularly from an author who is maybe not so technically minded when it comes to the actual act of putting words to paper. Grammar - basically.

My brother can't spell a damn thing and he's a genuinely good storyteller. His writing is great, it just ends up looking like a really smart child wrote it, as opposed to a grown man. I think it's a shame that he probably couldn't do it on his own. Then again, I don't know if a publisher would necessarily put up with him either, so, in that case it's a loss either way. But I get the desire for a buffer between audience and author, that's all I'm saying. Even if it's usually just a way for the publisher to make some extra cash by seizing the rights as a "distributor." - Not that distribution isn't important, but I digress. Which reminds me, is it really "self publishing" doesn't Amazon get a cut?

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There's no such thing as the establishment. Everyone knows that!

One of the slip-ups of way too many self-published novelists is their failure to recognize they need professional edits--for content (ow!), for grammar and usage, for typos and slips. People whose work is commercially published get three rounds of edits by three different people at no cost to themselves.

One could reasonably expect to pay no less that $500-$1500 for each round to hire a qualified person independently. For quite a few self-published people, that's more than the novel would earn.

And don't start me on cover art...

SPEED
Don't mistake my silence for weakness. Nobody plans murders out loud.

I've faced that helping a few poets put together chapbooks. The question "Do you expect people to spend money to find out you don't respect them?" seems to help. Even with my professional editing clients, I've had to get them to face up to the fact that settling for what saves them a couple hours now will shadow them forever. The regrets from anything skipped past in your book will be there for the rest of your life.

You don't really have to spend money. You can put in time with your own skills and trade skills with others to make up the rest. The problem is with the people who don't care about the end product, just wanting something to sell or to say they have a book.

And cover art is a minefield...

All roads lead to truth if you're willing to travel honestly.

There's not really any attitude about self-publishing.

I was once on a panel discussing "Why Aren't Indie Books Cool?" I took the stance that the premise was flawed. It's the rare person who pays any attention to who's publishing a book. Twain, Dickens, William Blake, Beatrix Potter, and others self-published and nobody considers that work lower-tier as a result. John Grisham self-published A Time to Kill with that not being a barrier to the work selling. The Joy of Cooking, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and other self-published books are household names. And of course, there's Fifty Shades of Grey.

As I noted on the panel, indie movies have a cool factor, as does indie music and indie comics. The issue is with the quality of the book. Books slapped together so an author has something to sell degrade the experience. These say there's no respect for the buyer. As such, people have started to look down on people selling their own work.

Indie movies that succeed don't look slapped together, nor do indie comics. Indie music that succeeds doesn't sound like a tinny recording of a garage band. The respect for the work shows in the presentation and comes across as respect for the viewer/reader/listener.

A painter who live-painted for a series I ran noted that she loved the poetry performed but wanted to smack the poets. She'd buy their chapbooks for $10 and get a quick thank-you. Then someone else would buy them a beer for $5 and the author would give that person a chapbook and spend twenty minutes talking to them. Too many people selling their own work undercut its value themselves. That same painter noted that, among painters, there's an unspoken rule that you don't sell your work too cheap as doing so devalues all paintings. That's happened to a large extent with indie authors.

However, if people are buying it online, it doesn't have that same selling-meat-out-of-your-trunk feel to it, helping to reverse that trend. And no, distribution doesn't keep it from being self-published any more than selling through Amazon stops Random House from being the publisher of their books.

All roads lead to truth if you're willing to travel honestly.