How does a person get a book published or a movie screenplay bought?

Question

I'm working on a biography about a normal person who has been through a lot of things. Everything is 100% true. Through her life there has been domestic abuse toward her mother by her father, which was witnessed as small children and now has shaped the two sisters into who they are today. The way they reacted back then is similar to how they react as adults. Thats just a small part of the story. There is also greed, lust, hate, resentment, etc. it goes on and on. The screenplay I'll keep to myself, but I know movies and this one would freak you out.

Answer 1

Screenplays are extremely hard to sell, but I would try www.hollywoodlitsales.com, www.nefilm.org. and www.inktip.com.

With regard to getting published. There is no definite way to have your book accepted by a publisher regardless of how well written it is. However, I do recommend checking out Poets and Writers magazine's classified section at www.pw.org. This section always has publishers looking for new books.

Regardless of how difficult it is to getting a publisher to publish a book you can always resort to self-publication. Many well know authors have resorted to this technique. Further, current technology makes this choice a far less costly and emotionally difficult course to take.

It used to be that if you published your own book, you paid for having around 5,000 copies printed and tried to sell them. What usually happened is that you ended up giving them away as Christmas presents, funerals, etc., and having abut 4,900 copies left molding in the basementwhen you gave up writing.

Now, there is print on demand publishing, and anyone can have their book printed at essentiallyno financial or emotional cost. In this light, I recommend taking a look at www.cafepress.com.

Cafepress is a print on demand company where you can offer everything from buttons to t-shirts to books that you write.

Each person doing business with cafepress is given a "store". If you offer a single item, such as a book, there is no charge to run your store. If you offer numerous items, it's about $5 per month to maintain your store.

Cafepress creates the button, book, t-shirt, greeting cards, etc. when an order is placed, ships it, bills it, and sends you a check for your sales. They have a set base price for an item, and you charge above that for whatever profit you want to make. For a book, they have a base price of so many cents per page. Advertising your store is up to you.

My wife and I have a store at cafepress, and you're welcome to check it out at: www.cafepress.com. Our store is called earthmoonmars.

There are also literary agents which will represent you to the film and book industry, but they tend to be very selective about what they represent.

Answer 2

The truth is such things are all money stunts with a few exceptions here and there. From publishing a book to creating a movie. All needs heavy publicity otherwise will just sit in a corner of the book store or may even not make it to the bookstore. No publisher will even talk to someone with no fame. It is a catch 22, no money no success in this area. Find some rich investors and see if they will help you out. Good luck

Answer 3

Biographies don't sell well unless the person is already famous.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but fiction is more believable, and usually is written to make a unique point. You can only get the same effect with a biography is the person is famous or notorious or did something extremely rare, strange, and newsworthy.