How to Pitch Your Book to Hollywood with Lindsey Hughes

318 / How do you craft a pitch that gets Hollywood's attention and translates your book to the screen—or just want to network and pitch yourself more effectively as an author? Story coach Lindsay Hughes shares insider strategies from the entertainment industry and lessons from Hollywood.

• Lindsey’s "cocktail pitch" formula that grabs attention
• How to talk about your story in a way that intrigues (good for pitching or writing blurbs)
• Why authors should balance craft development with marketing
• Understanding how Hollywood evaluates books and stories
• The real-world impact (and limits) of social media on book sales
• Trends in AI, indie publishing, and what’s next for authors and adaptations

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⚡Links:

• https://thepitchmaster.com
• Sell Your Book to Hollywood: How to Pitch Your Book, Find the Right Producer, and Navigate the Deal will be coming out this summer! Listeners can sign up to be notified when it is published at bookintohollywood.com
• Two Authors’ Podcast: https://pod.link/1671876768
• Belinda Kroll’s Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/worderella/an-uncanny-bargain?ref=7gqgmq
• Ep 294: Bart Baker on Pitching Your Book to Hollywood https://www.buzzsprout.com/2121723/episodes/18196372

Podcast Repurposing Ideas That Aren’t Blogs Or Social Posts https://buzzcast.buzzsprout.com/231452/episodes/19143524-podcast-repurposing-ideas-that-aren-t-blogs-or-social-posts

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

Basically, my version of an elevator pitch. I call it a cocktail pitch because when I lived in LA about four or five times a week, I was out in the mixed road looking for online version, they're always a bar. So you're holding a cocktail and you're like, what do you do? What are you working on? And so the whole point of the first initial pitch, or any pitch, but especially the first one, is to get someone to say, tell me more. Yes, that's what you want. Now, tell me more can be your impersonal, tell me your whole story. Tell me more can mean you send it over email, send me your book, or it could, you know, it can look a lot of different ways, but that's the goal. And so there's two parts to the cocktail pitch. The first part is the personal pitch, which is how you introduce yourself, and the second part is the project pitch, which for your audience would be how they talk about their book.

Sara 0:55

Welcome to the Wish I Moments podcast. I'm Sarah Rosette, and I'm Jamie Albright.

Jami 0:59

And this week on the show we have Lindsay Hughes. Yes, we do it so good. You guys can take notes. I'm telling you, it's really yes.

Sara 1:08

Grab a pen and paper. Lindsay has some really practical tips. She mostly helps authors pitch to Hollywood, but the way she teaches you to pitch, you can use it for elevator pitches, pitching your book, for writing blurbs. She has some great tips. One of the things she talks about is how, as authors, a lot of times we seem embarrassed when we introduce ourselves to other people where we don't describe what we do in a way that's easy to understand. So she helps you boil it all down. It's really good.

Jami 1:35

It is. It's really, really great.

Sara 1:37

What's going on with you?

Jami 1:39

Well, last week on the show, I talked about the colored edges, that I was going to get those done. I got them done. And then I go to load them, and the cost is so high. There's just no, it doesn't make any financial sense for me to do them to sell, like to sell it on demand. I'm going to do them, but I'm going to wait until I get the hardback cover. I don't have it yet. And I think I'm just going to do them in a hardback and then sell them, you know, have them to sell for book signings or special thing, you know, special edition kind of things. I couldn't make it make sense, financial sense to do it. It just was too expensive. I tried Ingram and I tried KDP, and it was both of them.

Sara 2:22

And you didn't you didn't look at Book Vault.

Jami 2:25

No, I didn't look at Book Vault, but does Book Vault like if they they can't order those through no, you can you could sell them yourself. Yes, and that's probably what I'll do. Yeah, I'll probably do it that way. Or or through Ingram, one of the two, but I'm just not going to uh it just didn't make any sense. So I just uploaded the paperback. It's fine. I got, you know, as I do, hyper obsessed over something, and then I was real disappointed I couldn't do it. Same. I know I was so disappointed I couldn't do it. And then I was like, what I like. It's you can do it later. It's fine. It's fine. I have the file. If I need it, I'll use it. So this week I've been working on my A plus content and the story behind the story. And of as true in true Jamie fashion, I had to really screw up the A plus content before I figured it out. And then I got it right. I mean, I worked on it all freaking day yesterday. I mean, into the night. Thought I had it done yesterday afternoon. And then when it finally loaded, I was like, oh no, that's not right. I didn't know which of the modules to pick.

Sara 3:29

It was and it that's one of those things that you need to see how it looks. And there's no way to preview it, is there?

Jami 3:36

Well, you can preview it, but it doesn't really show you what it's going to look like. I mean, in my opinion, it doesn't really show you what it looks like.

Sara 3:42

But you can look at it in the desktop and in the on the phone mode, but but it's not the same as looking at it when the whole page loads and you scroll down and see it, right? Yeah. And then and then you have to put it out there to look at it, really.

Jami 3:54

Yeah, absolutely. And then it takes forever if you go if you have to re-upload it. Yeah, makes change. But thankfully, I have a little time. I I loaded it last night, I showed it to a few people, you were one of them, and it it is a little hard to read. So I went back in, I just did it, went back in, made the font bigger. The problem is when you do that, it's so big on the the desktop, but then on the phone, it's still not, it's not there's not a good way. But anyway, I did it, and I'm real happy with the content. I think the content, yeah. He's just putting it up there. Yeah, I like the text.

Sara 4:31

Yeah, the the wording. I like the wording, and I thought it captured the book and everything. It's weird because if you're on mobile, they leave white margins. Maybe that's why people tend to sometimes just use images with no text, maybe.

Jami 4:45

Probably. Anyway, so that is up now. This is coming out Wednesday. So actually, the book will have been out two days before you guys hear this. So I have no idea how it's gonna do. It comes out on Monday, and the only thing I have left to do is I did a story behind the story. I think I did I talk about this that I'm gonna give away, yeah, for newsletter signups. But I asked my sisters and a few of the nieces and my sister's best friend if they wanted to write a little tribute. So they've all done that. I was really surprised. My parents, I was very surprised they did it, and I need to add those to by you know, behind what I wrote in the thing I give away. Nice. Yeah, I just I had thought I would put it in the back of the book, like for everybody, and I may regret doing it this way, but I decided, well, I kind of need a little incentive to get people on my newsletter. And I know that women's fiction authors don't really do this a lot, but I thought it was a good thing to give away. Plus, it's there if anybody wants to read it, you know.

Sara 5:52

Yeah, and people who are really interested in the book will sign up for it, and you can go back and change it later if you need to, if you change your mind.

Jami 5:59

I can change it. One thing I have done though is you know, I was selling, I'm selling the book to my newsletter followers on Curios. I've been pretty happy with Curious. There have been a couple of glitches, but I've emailed them and they've fixed them or told me what to do real fast. So it's it's a good side if you need somebody to be the merchant of record for your for a store. But I did in that copy put the story behind the story in in that in that copy for my newsletter. They're already on my newsletter, yeah. And I wanted them to have it. So they only have my version, they don't have what I'm adding, but it's fine.

Sara 6:37

And so then you'll take that down when the book launches, yeah.

Jami 6:41

Tomorrow at midnight it it comes down. So scarcity. Scarcity, I know, and uh, but you know, I mean, I haven't like it's not blowing anybody out of the water, it's about what I thought it would be, as far as people who've signed up. I think it will end up being almost exactly what I thought it would be. So I don't know if it's people just they don't really want to read the book, you know, and that's fine. Or they're they're hesitant because of curios, but I tried real hard to explain curiosity and that it's very trusted and all of that. Or if they just are procrastinating and they're gonna either buy a lot this evening or in tomorrow, or they're just gonna get it from Amazon. And and that's okay too. I probably will do this again just because I kind of like the fact that I mean, unless I did a rom-com release, I would probably do this again.

Sara 7:35

Yeah, and you've got the factor that less people buy direct, no matter how how well they know you, how much they like you. Just there are people that I've tried, you know, I always offer my audio direct as well early. And I have people who want to listen to it so bad, but they want to keep all their audio books together in their audible library, and they don't want to have one or two on book funnel. So I think it was last Christmas I used one of Damon's tips, and I said, if you want your audible library replicated, I'm happy to send you all the books. Just send me a screenshot, you know, of all your books you have in Audible, and I will send them to you so you can have the same thing in BookFunnel, and then you can buy direct from me and have everything there. Oh and some people took me up on it. Not everybody did. You know, I know you know there's always gonna be the the people who are like, no, I like this the best, and I just want to continue to use this. Right. So there's that factor too.

Jami 8:27

And they're you know, because our readers are older, you know, they're they're hesitant to click on sites they're not familiar with. It's probably not a bad idea. I thought I would have around a hundred, and that's probably what I'm gonna end up with.

Sara 8:39

I mean, it's not like not make it like we're not we're not going on vacation on this money, but but for as a test to see if somebody would if people would use the site and try and you know go outside Amazon, I think that's really good.

Jami 8:54

Well, and also how many people are really interested in in me riding another genre.

Sara 9:00

Is the potential group gets a little bit smaller each time you add in something like that? Yeah, yeah.

Jami 9:06

So the you know, from the people who actually click through to buy, the number is high. It's just yeah, the clicking through is the you know, yeah. Um anyway, but that's it. That's all I'm doing. My husband's gonna be gone on Monday, so I'll just be here chewing my nails by myself. Uh no, I'm gonna go do something out of the I think you should celebrate. What what will you do to celebrate? Because this is a huge, yeah, huge thing. I don't really know what I'll do. Chips and salsa, maybe, maybe I'll do something, but and try to do something where I'm not focused on that. Yeah, yeah. That's smart. I don't want to do that. And yeah, I mean, I've I've had a bit of a crash out this week. I'm not gonna lie. Just share this real quick and then we'll go on. But for those of you who have followed the journey, you know this has been a long journey, and writing the book really is the win, it's the victory. I really do believe that, and I feel it in my heart. But this release is so different from my rom com releases. It's made me kind of panic that okay, I know I have a good book, but who's gonna who's gonna read it? Like, who's gonna see? You're starting over. Who's gonna know about it? Yeah, I mean, if I can get it in front of people, I think they'll like it because I've also had more reviews come in, even from Gnet Galley, and they've been really great. But it's just like, what have I done? What have I done? You know, so there's been a lot of that this week. So we'll see. I just am having a very hard time not slipping back into that franticness, and I have vowed that I am not going to do that again because that is what I did the first time around. Frantic energy that I think worked in my favor, but uh it it doesn't really serve me anymore.

Sara 10:58

It boosts the hustle, right? It boosts the hustle, but I would say that way also lies madness because you're like it drives you crazy after and anxiety, and I'm trying not to do that.

Jami 11:10

I I'm just not that person anymore. It doesn't mean I don't want it to do well, it doesn't mean I don't want it to succeed and all of that. I'm just that frantic energy, I don't really think serves me right now. It just has no place in what I kind of what I want my life to look like and what I want this book to represent and all of that. So you're doing good, and because you're aware of it, yeah, because I don't have that frantic feeling, it makes me anxious. So if I have it, I'm anxious. If I don't have it, I'm anxious. I'm a mess. I'm a mess, y'all. You know this, you've always known this. Welcome to my world.

Sara 11:50

I think next week it will be better because it will be launched and it will kind of settle out. And you're good at continuing to sell things and promoting your books, so it's not like that's the end of it. No, I think it's yeah, yeah, it will settle out and it won't be as stressful.

Jami 12:06

Right. And one good thing, the Goodreads giveaway, I think by Monday or by tomorrow, I should have 5,000 entries. I'm very close to 5,000 entries, which I'm so very thrilled about.

Sara 12:18

That's excellent, yeah.

Jami 12:19

And uh I made sure to put it on book bub. Y'all do that, remember that because I've got like three almost 3,000 followers on book bub, and they'll get a release.

Sara 12:29

A notification. Yeah, yeah.

Jami 12:31

They'll get a notification, and so yeah, we'll see. But again, those are rom com readers, so we'll see what happens.

Sara 12:37

Well, that is good. Well, I have nothing that exciting this week. Um, did my trip, came back, and I I think I mentioned that I did some dictation before I left. Yeah, and so I worked on that while I was gone, and then I actually got some more dictation done while I was gone, which usually I I plan to do stuff and I never do, but I did get a couple more sessions done. And one of them was in the airport while I was waiting for my flight. And I was like, oh my goodness, there's gonna be so much in this that's not me. That's like, do not leave your bag unattended. But it all worked out, and I guess it didn't pick it up because it wasn't, you know, actually me speaking. Right. So I got a lot of words in this week, and I'm at the point in the book, I'm about halfway. So now I feel like I have a handle on where we're going. And I had a whole epiphany. Like last night in the middle of the night, I was awake and all of a sudden I just thought, you know how you're writing a book and you don't you're going along and you don't know actually what the theme is, or oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah, absolutely.

Sara 13:36

And this one I thought it's fragments, fragmentation, because it's got set in Egypt. So it's about a papyrus fragment. Yeah, there's a a note that they find that's a it's torn out of a book that's important, it's a clue. And then there's a couple of other things that are like that. And I'm and now that my brain is going, I'm like, okay, now I can work this in and I can have fragments of conversation be important. And so now I'm like, whoa, I've got it, I can keep going.

Jami 14:02

So it is the best.

Sara 14:04

And it's like thinking back, I'm like, okay, my I don't know if your brain, if you're doing this subconsciously, or I look back and I go, okay, I can pull these things, but a lot of it's already there. Anyway, so that's going on with me. Let's see, do I have anything else? Listen to a cool podcast from Buzzcast about ways to repurpose content for a podcast. And it was like, let's not talk about, you know, chopping it up and putting it on social media. Let's be creative. And they had some podcast examples that were so creative. Like one person had a long science podcast and it's long format, so it's like an hour, hour and a half. And so what they did, that person took the same feed, cut it down into shorter episodes, removed all the cussing, and made a feed for kids. And so, like, because it's all about science, it's called the ology's podcast. The person interviews zoologists and biologists and anybody that studies anything. Yeah, I thought that was so smart. But it had a lot of examples of how to take something that you're doing and create something different, like add value. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's interesting to listen to it and kind of um it made me start thinking like, how can I do that for my writing? How can and how can we do that for this podcast? And yeah, you know, so that was very interesting. I'm gonna think about repurposing your content, not just putting it on all of these different social platforms, but how can you take what you have and make something new? So that was interesting. Love it. And yeah, so let's see, we don't have any new supporters this week, but thank you to all our continuing supporters. Don't forget you've got the access to 20 plus supporter episodes. The two most recent ones are about writing conflict and emotion and publishing this. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to wish I'd known.com slash support, or you can find us on Substack.

Jami 15:50

Yep, exactly, exactly.

Sara 15:52

And we want to give a shout out, our May PodPal shout out to the two authors podcast. And they had Claire on this week, right?

Jami 15:59

Yeah, they had Claire Taylor on this week, and it was really great. But first, I have to address something. If you're listening, boys. I know I talk like a hick, but you don't need to point it out to everybody in the world.

Sara 16:11

They're aware, right?

Jami 16:16

I tell you.

Sara 16:17

Yeah, we didn't agree to critique each other's podcast just to that wasn't in the the small print.

Jami 16:24

I went back and read it. And that we talk too slow. Well, there's podcast speed apps. Well, and Nick uses it, by the way. He said he used it. Uh but yeah, yeah.

Sara 16:36

A lot of them have smart speed where it it it takes out the pauses between words, which I need that because I'm always thinking, and it's hard to come up with that specific word. Exactly.

Jami 16:47

But no, Claire's they have Claire Taylor on there. She she Nick can take in the test. They well, oh yeah, I guess they both did, but Nick had, and so they talk about Nick's results. Um it was really interesting. I found that I think my husband is an eight like Nick and listening to that, but it helped me think about ways that I could just interact with him better because I don't really think about that, like you know, in in those terms that I think about Enneagram really getting along with him at all.

unknown 17:17

No.

Jami 17:19

Oh but Claire's just she just has always so many great insights, and uh so yeah, y'all should listen to that. It's about they talk mostly about the Enneagram, not exclusively, but mostly about it. And uh, but it was it was a great podcast, so yeah, you guys should listen.

Sara 17:37

Yep, that link will be in the show notes. Oh, I also wanted to mention Belinda Kroll has a Kickstarter going. We had her on a couple weeks ago. She writes cozy romanticy and she illustrates her own projects, and it's beautiful and fun and interesting. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to go check that out, current Kickstarter. And I think that is everything. Should we get on with the podcast?

SPEAKER_07 18:01

Yeah. All right. I think so. All right, here is Lindsay. Today we're really excited to have Lindsay Hughes with us.

Sara 32:14

Hi, Lindsay. How are you?

SPEAKER_06 32:15

Hi, I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.

Jami 32:18

We are so glad you're here. Lindsay's a fellow Houstonian author with us here in Houston. So yeah.

Sara 32:25

Let me read your bio so people can hear a little bit about you. Lindsay loves helping people discover their superpower, creating compelling content, and feeling excited about pitching and networking. She teaches how to pitch like a boss, network like a VIP, and write like an Oscar winner. Sounds good.

Jami 32:44

That's really great. Well, tell us how you got started working with Rogers.

SPEAKER_06 32:48

Well, I ran away to Hollywood. I knew from a really young age, about 15, that I wanted to work in the movie business. I went to make movies specifically. And when I was lucky enough to have a summer job out there, and then I learned about the side of the business called creative development. And it's all about finding ideas that make good movies and TV shows, reading lots of scripts and books, and then hiring the writer and telling the writer what to do by giving story notes. So when you hear someone left a project because of creative differences, someone who had my job is who they would have had the differences with, because I was speaking for the studio I was looking for, the producer usually. And so that's how I began working with screenwriters. And I just loved, that's my favorite part of my job, was the whole creative brainstorming, mentoring writers, finding writers. I got to give a lot of people their first screenwriting job, which was really fun. But I didn't so much love the office politics side of things. And I wasn't that great at it either, because I just wanted to tell good stories. And so luckily I kind of I basically, even behind the camera, you age out in Hollywood. So I aged out and things were slowing down for me, but I was still really enjoying helping writers and helping my friends with feedback. And that kind of morphed into what I do now, which is I'm a story coach. And I started off helping screenwriters, and then just by happenstance in 2019, I ended up with three novelist clients. And I'm I've always been an avid reader, and we'll get to it later, but I have aspirations to be a novelist, so I was super excited to work with them. And I knew about indie publishing, but I was more familiar with traditional just because that's who I dealt with as a movie executive. And so I discovered Joanna Penn's podcast, who you guys always reference, she's amazing. And through her, I discovered a ton of other podcasts and I just started listening to them to help my clients. And the more I learned about indie publishing, the more excited I got because it's the opposite of life in Hollywood. So when you're in Hollywood, you sit, no matter who you are, whether you're an executive of a studio or you're a port screenwriter or someone in between, you sit around waiting for what I call the magic yes. You have to get the powers that be to say, yes, we'll make this movie, which is called green lighting. Yes, we like this project, we'll buy your script. It's you're waiting for the yes. And with indie publishing, you are the yes. You're not waiting for anyone to get your stories out in the world and talk directly to readers. So I I have worked with people, uh, novelists that are traditionally published too, but I'm just all in on indie publishing.

Sara 35:54

Yeah, we are too. It took me a while to come around to it, and but now I'm in Jamie. I think was always in indie publishing.

Jami 36:01

I was always in, but I I have, you know, had those maybe, maybe traditional publishing. But every time I have, I've had a few interactions with traditional publishing, and it's always been like, oh yeah, this is why I didn't want to do this. Like I have to keep reminding myself, yeah, this isn't the answer to all my problems.

SPEAKER_06 36:25

And well, especially now, because I mean things have changed, as y'all know, but now they expect they don't do anything to push your book. So my whole thing is if you're spending time and creativity and to push your book, why aren't you getting all their rewards?

SPEAKER_09 36:42

Yeah, yeah.

Sara 36:43

You know, that's a huge part of it, yeah.

Jami 36:46

I just want to say this to authors because I think it's important, because I think there are a lot of people that like me who can't flirt with that idea of traditional publishing. And I mean, I am not anti-traditional publishing, but I will say this. Now it feels like, because I think it's true, that traditional publishers are not taking your book until they see if you can make it a success, and then they come after your book. And honestly, that's a better position for you, but it's kind of a chicken shit way to do it, because they're not willing to take a chance on things. Like you have to prove something to them, and I don't love that. I just don't love that. And then so why would you give up control when you're already doing all the things? So right.

SPEAKER_06 37:35

You and that's how Hollywood is too. They don't want it, they don't want to take any risks and they want guarantees. And of course, there are in life in general, there are no guarantees, but entertainment, and I loop looks into that because I look at books as entertainment. There are no guarantees. Like we we don't know what's gonna hit. We would like to say we do, but it's all and so I agree. They I I just really caution anyone who's made made a success as an indie publisher with their book and is making money to go the traditional route because it usually doesn't go well and you make a lot less money. So that's just my two cents.

Sara 38:14

Well, you're preaching to the choir here. Well, tell us about you said you have some maybe a desire to write a book or write a novel. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_06 38:24

Yes. Well, so I have always wanted to be, well, first I've always written. So I my first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a kids' children's book writer when I was still a kid. So I and then I switched to movies and I, you know, went on that kind of segue for 30 years, and I'm back in full-in storytelling mode. And I do have a novel. I work on it in fits and starts, and I really my biggest struggle is finding time to write between my nonfiction and my fiction because I I'm I've written one nonfiction book called How to Turn Your Screenplay into a novel. And you got this actual podcast inspired my next book because I was writing it, I thought it was gonna be an article for your listeners, and then it turned into I'm at 30,000 words. So I was Oh yeah, so it's a book also thank you, which I know then.

SPEAKER_09 39:20

That's happy.

SPEAKER_06 39:21

Yeah, so it's gonna be called Sell Your Book to Hollywood, how to pitch your book to find producers and navigate the deal. So it's like all the things for Hollywood babies and authors in particular. And and then I have my I have a nonfiction a newsletter that's nonfiction that's for writers, and that comes out weekly, that's free. Y'all can sign up at the pitchmaster.com slash newsletter. And I started that as a chore and I freaking love it now. I love writing that. And so that's the struggle for me is all of my writing about writing to find time to work on my my novel. So it's in fits and starts, but it's I have I belong to a writer's group. I have a coach, his name is Jeff Elkins, the dialogue doctor. He's amazing. And so I am working on it. I just I keep saying, oh, I'm gonna finish my first draft by this time, and then I I get all these other ideas for things I want to write about. And now I'm all I'm really interested in picture books, and I want to do that this year. We'll see. It's like nice to have the problem of being excited about all these things.

SPEAKER_09 40:30

All the different all the things we can do about occupational hazard become an indie author because you're like, oh, I can do it all. Tell me more.

Jami 40:40

What do you wish authors knew about your field?

SPEAKER_06 40:44

I wish, and this isn't all authors, but I I do see it a lot, and I'll be interested to hear what y'all think. I wish more writers were focused on their craft. I feel like they learn a little bit about writing and they write, and then it's all in on marketing, which I totally understand. Marketing is overwhelming. I mean you you can do it all day long and still have more to do. My to-do list for my nonfiction is literally five pages long in my bullet journal and it never gets any shorter. So I totally understand that, but I think that you when you're as you develop and work on your marketing skills as a writer, you still need to be working on your writing. And I just I feel very strongly that it's you never you're always improving. And so, like I've been writing my whole life. I'm still reading books, I'm still listening to podcasts, I'm still learning new things. I have my own coach, and I just wish there was as much emphasis on that as marketing right now. I mean, things could change, but that's kind of what I see.

Sara 41:54

So critical. And it's I think the marketing, we can we can't get wrapped up in the marketing to the point that we forget about craft, and you can always be improving your craft, even if you've written for 20, 30 years, there's still stuff to learn. Well, we talked a little bit about indie publishing. Is there anything that you wish you knew about indie publishing and working with authors?

SPEAKER_06 42:15

Well, I I thought about this. I guess I thought when I started learning about it and working with and encouraging people to do it, I kind of saw it as the same as traditional publishing. And by that I mean traditional publishing doesn't innovate or change ever. Right. God bless them. Very, very glacial. And so it just my interactions with traditional publishing as a as a development executive, it was it I never it was always the same. And so I kind of thought when I first got into it that indie publishing would be like that and that there would be one-step way to do things. But so I like that there's always something new. There's always a new platform, there's always a new way to reach your readers. And uh I I like that it's always changing, but I I wasn't expecting that. I thought it was just like, oh, you put your book up on these three places, and then that, you know, like you only had to learn a few things. But the equivalent of the big five, I guess.

Jami 43:23

I and that's understandable because until I mean, who know who I'm starting to prepare for the launch of this book, and yay, that's so exciting!

SPEAKER_06 43:32

Congratulations.

Jami 43:33

Thank you. But I I was like, I finished something and I was like, oh, I need I need a list. Why don't I have a list? And I said, and you can be sure I told my husband, I don't even know if he was listening, I really was just talking. I said, you can be assured I'm about to put this on the list so I can mark it off.

SPEAKER_06 43:55

You can't miss that.

Jami 43:57

So anyway, it is, I mean, there is. So much, and there are so many ways to do this, you know, and and that's the beauty of it, I think. What do you see authors doing that they do because they think that they have to, but they aren't producing results?

SPEAKER_06 44:14

Well, I I have strong opinions about this. You may disagree because I know you're like the TikTok queen over there, but I I think in general, and again, you just said life indie life is choose your own adventure. So there's no blank in anything, right? Ever. But I think in general that social media doesn't translate to book sales unless you're really good at TikTok, you have the luck to have a TikTok person pick you up and that goes viral. But that's really nothing you can control other than writing a great book, right? Right.

Jami 44:53

Um and I and it's a lot of great books that haven't been picked up by anybody.

SPEAKER_06 44:58

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's really sad because when social media started, you saw your friends' content, like who you followed, you saw it. I on Instagram, I don't see anybody's stuff who I personally know and love, like even, you know, ever. And it's a little bit better on Facebook in terms of what Facebook shows me, but I j it's just not what we're always lamenting, what it was. And so I think, and I do it for my for pitchmaster, my coaching business. And I think of it more as proof of concept, like if someone Googles me or they're interested in me and they go to my they take the time to go to my profile, then they can see me. They can see who I am and what my philosophy is and what I'm teaching.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 45:54

Honestly, the only place I have consistent interaction that's led to results for me is LinkedIn. And so I don't know what it's like for fiction authors. I'd love if anyone's had a great experience, please email me and at Lindsay at the pitchmaster.com because I want to teach it. But for nonfiction people, it's really good because you're you can when you post there, you're just posting more of what you think or what you teach, and people comment. And then I've had great luck this year networking on there, and that's where my content gets seen the most because they actually show it to people that follow you. I do have some friends that are screenwriters and have written books and do talk post about their books out there and so that are novels, so we'll see. But I I I'm actually really interested in talking to anyone who's had success promoting novels on there.

Jami 46:52

We would be interested in talking to them too.

SPEAKER_06 46:54

Yeah, I know. I feel like there's an I feel like it's an untapped thing, and I'm not on TikTok. I don't understand it, so I can't speak to TikTok. And I'm not, I got I got shadow banned when Twitter was still Twitter, like in 2016. And I never have kind of broke my heart because I had a lot of followers on there, and I just never went back to try to redo it now that it's X. So I can't speak to X either. But I know there are authors that really interact with their with their readers on there. So yeah, I think it's just don't spend and oh, the other thing I wanted to say about social media is the other negative thing for it for all of us, but especially for writers who should be writing, is it's so easy to get sucked in and scroll and scroll. And so I have kind of a love-hate relationship with that where I take it off my phone and then I put it on my phone and then I take it off my phone, and so it's currently off my phone. And I and I have been writing more.

Jami 47:53

Strange how that works, right? I mean, I'm a user, and but you post regularly, Jamie. I do post regularly, but but I don't know that it moves the needle, but for anything, for anything, and so mostly I'm a user, and uh TikTok is my pusher. It would be better if I stayed off of it, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_06 48:15

Well, my problem is chick cookies, I eat way too many cookies. We all have our things, we all have our true. I did just hear in my writer's group, someone did a presentation about selling on TikTok shop. Yeah, and I and I, of course, since I'm not on there, I didn't know anything about it. And I was really interested in that whole ecosystem. Yeah. So there are people that are making money as authors doing that, yeah. But to me, that's different than social media because it's more like selling than it's much more straightforward than posting about your day.

Sara 48:47

You're if you're talking about here's my book, you might be interested, please buy it here, right?

SPEAKER_09 48:52

Yeah, right now. Exactly.

Sara 48:54

Yeah. Well, have you seen any similarities in writers who have been successful over the long haul when the with as you worked with different writers and screenwriters?

SPEAKER_06 49:03

Well, I wanted to ask you what you meant by success, because that is so everyone has it changes, right?

Sara 49:09

Yeah, and everyone has a different definition, right? So I I would suppose people who have been able to stick with it over time, because like you said, a lot of people have the desire to write, but it's finding the time and getting it done, getting the books done or the screenplays done.

unknown 49:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:27

I think I and I have a lot of catchphrases, and one of them is always be writing. I think the best way to be successful as a screenwriter, a novelist, a screenwriter, and a novelist is to always be writing first. Especially in movie world and TV world, they always want to know what else you have, what new thing you have. And for authors, it's just plugging away the more as you know, the more books you have for sale, the more income streams you have, the more chance you have to make more money, the more you stay in people's minds, you know. And so I think it's just finding a rhythm for you with your writing that isn't burning you out. I don't, I'm not anti-rapid release. I just don't understand how people do that. I mean, I'm just I don't understand it. I I I think more power to you, but you've got to find your own rhythm and you've got to also find a balance between working on working on your work in project, your work in progress to thinking of new ideas to then marketing all of them. So, like I mentioned earlier, that's my challenge is balancing my creative energy and also not getting distracted and being like, oh, I'm so excited about this one thing. Let me which is what I've been doing with the book y'all y'all inspired. And that's all I've been doing. And so that then other, you know, everything else doesn't get done.

Jami 50:51

So right, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 50:53

I think it's always a challenge to balance those three things out. Your current thing, thinking of a new thing, and then put them in marketing.

Jami 51:01

Well, besides social media, what are some common mistakes you see authors making?

SPEAKER_06 51:07

I think it's not valuing feedback and not and putting things out that aren't fully cooked. I'm lucky I read really fast, and and I'll I'll read something that they did a great job marketing it because they got me to buy it. But it's not, and it's a great concept. There, like I can I know like my the film executive part of my brain is like, oh, this could have been so great if only they'd worked on it a little more, gotten some help. And so, and I understand you just want to get the thing out you want, but you also want to make sure it's ready to go. Yeah, but then the flip side of that is you also have to know which feedback to take, because you can also get derailed. So it's just sort of having the discernment to know who to ask for help, who to ask for feedback, and then the discernment of is this good advice or not? Like if you write cozy mysteries, don't ask the thriller writer, they'll want more violence, they'll want you to cuss. They'll all these, you know. So you've got to not dramatic enough. Yes.

Jami 52:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 52:12

Like that's the whole point. It's cozy. Yeah.

Jami 52:16

And now I'm guilty of trying to get too much input. That's mine.

SPEAKER_06 52:20

Well, that's a trap, too. I mean, it's gosh, it's so hard. I mean, uh just pushing that publish button. I was so surprised with my nonfiction book because it wasn't a story. So I thought it would be easier. It was still terrifying pushing the button. So it's yeah. And too much feedback is okay as long as you go through it and you don't take all of it where you can get it. I don't know where to fill how to filter. For you, I would say your even your new project, it's super clear what it is. And then your romantic comedies, what they are, are super clear. So you just have to go through it and be like, is this in alignment with what with me, with my brand, with this story brand, with this voice? And then you can probably ignore a lot of it. That's good advice. I can't help it. I can't help coaching. Sorry.

SPEAKER_09 53:08

No, we're we like confirmation. We both of us do, we're always seeking out confirmation. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_06 53:17

No, that's everybody, that's all of us. Like being a creative is hard. It's it's you're vulnerable all the time. Yes.

Sara 53:25

Yeah, I have heard, I remember listening to a podcast interview, and a woman was talking about her revision process. And if her editor sent something back and said, you know, this sentence isn't structured correctly, you need to change this. She said, No, that is the way I want it. And I was like, wow, I wish I could be confident about everything. But yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 53:46

Well, it helps me when I hear about when you guys share about how you're like hating what you're working on. Cause I like this was last year with this book that I that my novel. I cried for two weeks because I was like, ah, this is terrible. I've been working so hard and it's awful, and it's not what I, you know. And so, and then right at that point, one or both of you said the same thing. And I was like, thank God, thank, thank God for Sarah.

Jami 54:12

We're always there, we're always there for you to make you feel better about yes.

Sara 54:17

It's like my brother, he's in negotiation, and he said, It's not a true negotiation until everybody's unhappy. So you're not really to that point in your book until you just really hate it, and then you're like, you've reached that stage, and you're like, okay, now we can take a break and then go back and go over it again. But that's just part of it.

SPEAKER_06 54:36

Yeah, and this is why your podcast is so great and having a writer's group is great because I cried to my writers' group about crying. I mean, it was just like so we need people. My my coach Jeff Elgin says writing is a team sport, and I think that's so true. Even though we're all in our rooms typing by ourselves, you've got to get the support, which is why coaching and groups and all of it are so important.

Sara 55:00

Let's talk about trends a little bit. Okay. So, what do you see on the horizon for? I'm sure AI is part of it, but what do you see for writers and writing and especially related to the entertainment industry?

SPEAKER_06 55:15

Okay, well, I'm super excited. I know everyone else is like in doom and gloom right now. So here is your burst of positivity about the future, creative people. AI is gonna is not gonna kill any of us, it's not gonna kill our careers, it is gonna help us. And here's how the first thing I'm excited about is generative search optimization, where the which we're already seeing, if you Google something and you have like the the summary at the top, that's that's GSO, right? So forget CSO. We all need to be optimizing for GSO. And and I just wrote an article about that. So you can go to my website and read it. And it was inspired by stuff I learned from Thomas Umstad of the novel marketing podcast. Anyway, that's yeah, and so then what this means is if you write a weird book aimed at a weird audience, like some weird, like the example I use is gay vampire love story, right? Something that's so niche.

SPEAKER_07 56:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 56:16

People it people that need that story are gonna be able to find you so much easier. I mean, searching for stuff on Amazon is the pits because it's so broad.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 56:28

So I'm really excited about that. So I think everyone needs to learn about that. We need, and I'm we all need to work on optimizing our websites for that. And then the part two of that is what I and everything I talk about in my new book, How to Sell Your Book to Hollywood, is current old school traditional Hollywood. And I and I do I talk about this too. I think things are changing. And I I I don't know what the Hollywood establishment is going to look like in two years, let alone five years. But it's really changing the but the good news is because of the generative AI filmmaking tools, anyone can make a movie now that looks like it's a it's it's generated by the computer, so it's technically animated, but it looks photorealistic.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Right.

SPEAKER_06 57:22

And you so what you're gonna have is what happened with publishing with the Kindle in 209, right? Is you're gonna have and the just like kind of New York went away and they're still having trouble and indies are making all the money. That's what's gonna happen with movies and television. You're gonna have people all over creating things. Now, everyone's worried about AI slop. Well, there's already horrible movies and TV being made every day anyway from professionals, right? So there's gonna be just like normal, bad stuff and good stuff, but it's there you're gonna be able to make movies so cheaply and make audio full cast audio books that are more like audio dramas cheaply. What I think is gonna happen is that creators are gonna have it's the focus is gonna be on building your audience and finding your people even more. It's gonna be the hunt Kevin Kelly's A Thousand True Fans even more. And what's gonna happen is like just I'm in a cozy mystery mood. I'm gonna go to Sarah's website. There's gonna be the book that I can buy as an ebook. There's gonna be the fancy hardcover so I can have something in my hands I can buy. There's gonna be I'm gonna the all-cast audio drama slash audiobook I can buy and the movie she's made. And I can be like, I want I'm in the mood to read a book. I my mom and I, I live with my mom. We're big cozy mystery people, that's all we watch on TV. So we'll be like, oh, I need to, I'm gonna watch Sarah's latest thing and download it for and watch it while we eat dinner tonight. Or I'll do all three. I there's lots of people that like to read the book and then see the movie or see the movie and read the book.

SPEAKER_08 59:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 59:05

And so that's what I think is gonna is happening. I don't know when that's gonna fully come to fruition. And I don't think I understand that every author is not a filmmaker, it's a completely different skill set in terms of visual storytelling. So I also think that there's gonna be people that pop up that are great AI filmmakers that authors can hire to go to make the movie of their book. But I think I'm I'm super excited as someone that dealt with all these, the whole waiting for the magic yes, which just you die a slow death in Hollywood. I am so excited. So that's what I think is gonna happen.

Sara 59:46

I love that vision. Yeah, and I think that'd be awesome if you could go to my website and just choose which thing you want how you want to experience it. And if you like the book, then you could be like, Oh, I think I'll go watch the movie or the miniseries or whatever this weekend. Yeah, that would be fantastic.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:02

And let's expand it. Then maybe you've also got like a board game there. I mean, or the video game version. I mean, the possibilities are endless, yeah. And it and because authors in particular, we are AI making AI AP IP making machines. Yes, and we're and we don't right now, we don't have a hundred million dollars to go make our action movie, right? I just think it's gonna be very cool, and it's gonna be so different from how it was, we can't really imagine it right now. It there's gonna be two challenges as we shift into that, and it's figuring out how to monetize the the movies and the TV shows, right? And and get and and building your getting your people. So it's just I say double down on your newsletter and and podcasting and all the things to find, and if TikTok's working or social media is working, double down on what's working to and keep doing it.

Sara 1:01:00

And I think in a way, just having a movie, being able to have something like that is a very exciting thought. Yeah. But how many think about how many authors and how many readers have had a favorite book and it gets made into a movie or TV show, and people are disappointed because they did such a poor adaptation of it, or they took it in a in a way that really disappointed the fans. Whereas if an author is in control of their content, they can keep it true to the vision that they had, you know, they might want to take it in a different way, right? But it just could be really cool. And all those authors that had things that were not done well, they could be like, Well, now we're gonna do it the right way.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:36

That too, yeah. I didn't even think of that. You can you can fix things that have gone awry.

Jami 1:01:41

Yeah, yeah. You reach out to us because you had heard our interview with Bart Baker. As to remind listeners, Bart is a screenwriter, he's had several movies done, and his book, Honeymoon with Harry, being made into a major motion picture starring Kevin Costner and Jake Dylan Hall. Is it Dylan Hall or Gyllen Hall? I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:05

I never it's a weird one. I have to do it.

Jami 1:02:08

Taylor's X anyway. Is it him? Is he the one that kept her scarf? Give her scarf back, Jake. So you heard that and you were like, Bart had talked about writing, you know, sending your sending a pitch about your books, and you were like, Well, I can help with the pitch part. So tell us like you suggested like writing a two-paragraph pitch email that gets read. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_06 1:02:33

So I teach a way of pitching called the cocktail pitch, and it is basically my version of an elevator pitch. I call it a cocktail pitch because when I lived in LA, about four or five times a week, I was out at a mixer looking for screenwriters and they're always at bars. And so you're holding your cocktail and you're like, what do you do? What are you working on?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:54

And so the whole point of the first initial pitch, any pitch, but especially the first one, is to get someone to say, tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:03

That's what you want. Now, tell me more could be you're in person, tell me your whole story, tell me more could mean you send it over email, send me your book. It could, you know, it can look a lot of different ways, but that's the goal. And so there's two parts to the cocktail pitch. The first part is the personal pitch, which is how you introduce yourself, and the second part is the project pitch, which for your audience would be how they talk about their book. So the first one, the first part of the personal cocktail pitch is your writer log line. And it's kind of similar to what you teach, Jamie, about branding. It's your, it's I write in the format of book. So y'all are all novelists. So I'm a novelist. I write and then your genre. So I wrote romantic comedies, I write cozy mysteries about, and then the kind of character that your story is about, or the kind of story you like to write, plus a little bit of your personality. And I actually have always used Jamie's and when I teach. So yes, which is hi, I'm Jamie Albright. I write, I think it's kissy, swoony, sexy, peer pants, funny books. That gets her genre, that gets her tone, that gets her personality, and that's a writer log line. And if you are listening and you're like, well, I don't really know what my kind of story is, the easiest way to figure it out is to just do a brain dump. And I'm a big believer of piece and paper. So just take, just write without editing yourself every story, every book, every screenplay, every random idea, your work in progress, write it all down and look at it and really think about what's the connective tissue between all of those things. Because something I noticed early on working with screenwriters is that writers have themes. They have things that they are almost always writing about and attracted to. So for your writer log line, it could be your theme. Maybe you always like writing about broken families that heal. It could be a character like a lone wolf or a trope, enemies to lover, something. You'll notice something. And it may not be in everything on your list, but it'll be in a lot of them. And that's kind of what you're going to use to form your writer log line. So the second part is your origin story. So I bet y'all don't know this listening, but Pete Superman isn't the only one with an origin story. We all have them. And usually you have more than one, it all started with, but you think about there's probably a funny story or an instance, you know, the inciting incident if we're using storytelling structure of something that kind of got you started on your creative storytelling journey, on wanting to be an author, on loving cozy mystery, whatever, whatever the thing is. So if there's it all started with. And that's when I realized, and now I am a writer of so I'll get I'll tell you all mine. So I was three years old, and my dad had taken me to see the spy thriller, Three Days of the Condor. We're sitting in the theater, it's the climax of the film. The bad guy's gotten the drop on Robert Redford. He's holding him at gunpoint, and the whole audience went, and then in that moment of silence, little three-year-old Lindsay piped out so that everyone heard her. Don't worry, he used to be a bad guy, but now he's good. And that is exactly what happened. And the next instant, that was when, in that moment, my knack of storytelling and my love of movies was born. And now I help people tell great stories, and I still love movies and books, all kinds of stories. That's great. Yeah. And love it.

Sara 1:06:50

It's so encapsulated.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:52

Yes. And it and it makes you so memorable, you know, because and that's the thing is everyone is really interesting. So, but we don't always come across that way. So we when you are introducing yourself either over email or in person, you want to be dynamic and everyone's gonna remember you're it all started when. And they're fun. I mean, and and if you have more than one, you might change it up depending on who you're talking about. I have another one that's I use in job interviews when I was an executive about why I wanted to be in work in movies. Yeah so yeah. And so that again, it's it all started with, and that's when I realized, and now I. And then you're gonna talk about what you're doing now, your your current book you're working on, or your book that just came out. Do you have a podcast? Have you been on a podcast? That kind of stuff. And then you're gonna go to a little bit about you. You don't have to, but this is where like you can talk about where you live, if you have kids, if you have dogs, that kind of thing. And then we round it off with the the magic bit that's in almost all author bios, which is when I'm not writing, you can find me. Dot dot dot. So mine is when I'm not writing, you can find me looking for the perfect chocolate chip cookie and playing with my dog.

Sara 1:08:12

Nice. I like it. And you you're saying these should be in basically two paragraphs.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:16

So that's, I mean, it depends if you're it all started with is a little long, you might have to break it up. But yeah, it's just one's your personal, because you're gonna say, dude, this is why you should care about me or who I am. I am a storyteller. I kind of know what I'm doing. And then you're gonna talk about your project. Right. Or you can flip it. There's in your email, you can do it either way. I just like to do person when I'm teaching, we do the personal first. I don't know why. I've just always done that. All right, well, that's great.

Sara 1:08:46

And I like that it gives you a little almost kind of fill-in-the-blank format. You can make it your own, but it's a good starting point.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:53

Yeah, exactly. So both the personal and the project cocktail pitch, think of them as your foundation. And so once you get good at them, when you're talking to folks in person, you can kind of chiropractically adjust, you know, depending on your situation.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:11

So, but it just the other thing I want to say to everyone listening is I have never met a writer who didn't introduce themselves like they were embarrassed. Oh my gosh, it drives me crazy. You that's why I developed the log line because I every single time, well, what kind of things do you write?

Sara 1:09:30

What kind of, you know, are you are you a pull the information out of them, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:34

I want to know are you a novelist? Are you a screenwriter? Are you a sitcom writer? What's your genre? What do you like? All that stuff. So you you need to be excited to introduce yourself as a writer because people think authors are cool. I know to us it's like an everyday thing and we're over it. Yeah, people think authors are cool. And if you're at a writing conference, like I know you guys just went to one, you're you're gonna be meeting other authors and they want to hear about what kind of author you are and what kind of things you write. So be excited to talk about who you're writing and that you're a writer.

Sara 1:10:06

I love that. Well, tell us a little bit about understanding how Hollywood evaluates story materials.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:13

Oh, okay. That is a big question. Let me try to boil it down. It's just like selling to a customer that you have people looking for different things. So you have to know your audience, who you're pitching to. Right. You want to make sure they are looking for your thing. And I there's a way to do that that I'm gonna go through in my book, but it's basically watching a lot of things, noticing who's making the things that are similar to yours, right? So there's some places where they're focused on one thing like horror or romance or book adaptions that are women's fiction. But then you have a giant place like Netflix, right? That makes all kinds of things. Those executives are given what's called a creative mandate, where the head of the the head executive that's in charge of all the development executives says, we're gonna make, we're looking for these kinds of stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:09

Right. And so they are specifically looking for those kinds of stories because they're gonna get promoted if they find them, right? So but as an outsider, unfortunately, you're not gonna have access to that information. But that's why to remember that a no is often not personal. It's nothing to do with your story isn't good. It's your story isn't for us, which is all as indie authors, you experience when people don't buy your book. It's the same thing, right? And so that's the first thing. The second thing is that they want good stories and and they would rather buy something that well, let me rephrase that. They would rather make a movie off of something that was something else than make an original story, which is really sad. But that, you know, for screenwriters, for authors, it's really sad, yeah. So even if it's not a bestseller, if they can go to their boss and say, but it was a book first, yeah, you know, or but it was a you know, a video game first or a comic book or whatever.

Jami 1:12:26

We have the structure. All we have to do is make yeah, it's pull out the screenplay part of the, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:33

It just helps. So so those two things I want to really excite everyone listening. They need stories, they need good stories, and they like things that were made based on that were something else first.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:46

Hollywood doesn't really know or understand or pay attention to indie publishing. It's not that there's a prejudice against it at all. It's that there are millions of stories in the world in all formats, not just books. And you can't track and keep track of and know all of them. It's just, it's just too much. And so there's a, you know, a system in place that there has been since they started making movies of of New York publishing, feeding the studio stuff, right? And so that's why most things that get made are traditionally published. It's not that there's a prejudice, it's that there's an established relationship and conduit between them. They won't look down on your book that it's indie. They won't, they're only gonna care about what the story is and if it fits in with their your group of movies and TV shows that you have in development, meaning that you're working on making, is called your slate. And so sometimes your slate is all one thing, like romantic comedy. Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason to it, and sometimes you have a plan and you're looking for things that fit in. So it all just depends. But in terms of actually evaluating material, it's just how a reader would, you know, it's is the concept, yeah, the characters, and we care about characters because of emotion, right? And Hollywood runs on all of the stories are are run on emotion, just like books run on emotion. So it's those things, and so and it's not personal, it's whether whoever's reading your book likes it or not. Yeah, that's it.

Jami 1:14:30

I think I might have told this story on here before if I did. Bear with me. But when I was doing extras work in when I was in Austin, and I had worked with this one a casting director for a while, and they were casting a commercial, and she knew I had kids, so she asked if and it was kids were supposed to be in there. It was a car commercial, but kids, a lot of kids. So my kid, my two daughters, I took them, they went, and one of them got pulled out to be a featured extra, and the other one, the younger one, was upset about that. And I was like, it's not like it's not personal. It's like when you go to your sock drawer looking for your pink frilly socks, you want your pink frilly socks. You don't grab your soccer socks, or your you'll go past your soccer socks, even though you like your soccer socks, or your, you know, Disney themed socks. You love those, but you want and need the pink frilly socks, and that's what you grab. It doesn't have anything to do with what else is around there, and that's that's the same way with our books. It's the same, it's that's the same way with most things in this industry. Is it's not personal, they don't they don't even know you, they just it's just what they're looking for.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:49

Yeah, and and you and the thing is you never know. Like, I mean, it the mandate can be so weird. So I worked at Disney feature animation, and the guy that was the head of the studio at that time hated birds. I was not allowed to have a bird movie because he hated birds. I mean, it can be that weird, the mandate can be that strange. So you you know, who you're not gonna be sitting there going, well, they rejected my book because it was about birds.

SPEAKER_09 1:16:15

No, right, right. They're not gonna tell you that, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:16:19

No.

SPEAKER_09 1:16:20

Sorry, no birds.

Jami 1:16:22

Well, and interestingly, like who would have thought gay hockey romance would have blown up the way heated rivalries has blown up?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:30

Yes.

Jami 1:16:30

Now every everybody wants to make some form of a gay hockey romance to get on that bandwagon. And I don't think that's gonna happen. I think that was a I think it was a flash in the pan. It was, you know, it was well done. It was, you know, all of the things, but you can't duplicate that kind of thing very often.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:54

And Hollywood moves so slow that by the time all of the it'll be like three years from now when all those things come out and that you know, everything would have moved on from there.

Jami 1:17:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:04

Yes.

Jami 1:17:05

I mean that's the danger of chasing trends, just in general, but yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:10

Well, and and the reason that you have like the cliched, you know, executive or producer that yells at everybody and throws things is because they are really crazy there, because there's no way to know what's gonna be a hit. And you're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie or a season of television, and it you don't know. And you know, you can get you can get fired, yeah. If you if you choose something and make make it, and it costs a lot of money and no one goes to see it. Like, I mean, these are kind of old examples now. But when Pirates of the Caribbean came out, there had not been a commercially successful pirate movie since I think the 40s. And I was in a meeting where Michael Eisner, who ran Disney, was talking about it, and he said, Well, I told Nina, who ran the live action movie division, she's gonna lose her job if this doesn't go, you know, if it doesn't make money. Yeah. She said, No, no, it's gonna make money. We got to make the movie. I mean, she, you know, that's that kind of pressure that people are under who are making these decisions, even though no one knows the answer.

Jami 1:18:16

From your media kit thing, how important is a pitch deck? What is genre and why it's important? Can you explain those things and why are tropes important and how can writers use them in their pitch?

SPEAKER_06 1:18:29

Yes. So a pitch deck is is a PowerPoint or a slide presentation with visuals to pitch your project. I think that it isn't important for authors because they're not they're not coming from the movie business side of things, number one. Yeah, number two, you just want to get your book, you want someone to read your book. That's the first step to this whole process, right? And so you've got to craft your email in a way that catches their attention and pitches your your the project so that they're like, okay, I'll read that. I'll cause that and then asking someone to read a book is a big ask. That's the other thing you have to understand is everyone's to read pile is literally a foot high because you have so many scripts and books that you're you that you're submitted that you need to get through. And your thing, because you are an outsider, is gonna be a lower priority than other things. Yeah. And so you have to just be patient. It's gonna take a while to get an answer, usually. I mean, everything maybe they read it over the weekend and they love it and you hear back in a day, but that's gonna be an outlier experience. I really don't think with what the authors are trying to do, they need a pitch deck. I think if you were a producer, if your producer who's gonna hopefully take on your book, they're gonna make the pitch deck.

Jami 1:20:02

Okay, okay. And then what about genre and why is it important?

SPEAKER_06 1:20:07

Well, genre is important because it goes back to your audience, right? So you've got to know who if you you've got to hope that who you're pitching to, hopefully you've done your research and you know they want your thing, or they've at least made projects in the past that are that are in the same vein as your story. So you don't want to pitch a horror thing to people that only make PG-rated films, or you know what I mean? Stuff like that. So that's why it's important. All genre, there's no one genre that is a no-go for Hollywood. They make all kinds of stories because audiences like all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:46

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:46

Horror popped my mind because I don't like horror. I am a giant, giant scaredy cat. In fact, it is the one genre I won't work on with clients because I don't want to live in the story. Um, and another thing is there's a lot of great Christian authors, Christian romance things. And the good news is there's lots of outlets for that now that are not as mainstream Hollywood, but there's places you can take those. I kind of explain how to find them in in my book. And but so again, know your audience. So say you're a Christian author, don't pitch to someone you know is Jewish. I mean, I know that seems weird, but I I experienced that. I worked for a company that was run by three lovely, devout Jewish men. They were not interested in a story about Jesus. It wasn't that they had a problem with Christians or anything like that, but that's not where they were gonna spend their time and their money making something. I had someone come in and pitch me something that was a true G, it wasn't just like a Christian romance, it was a Jesus story.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:54

And he started and I told him, I was like, that's not gonna fly here, and he kept going. And I was, and so I had to sit through 45 minutes of that. So that's the other thing is take when you get a no, take the no. The no is just information, it's that's all it is.

Jami 1:22:11

Fell fast.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:12

Yeah.

Jami 1:22:14

Well, what about tropes? How are they important and how can we use them?

SPEAKER_06 1:22:19

I think tropes, tropes are important because they're just it's they're such a great shorthand for pitching and selling. Tropes have been become more of a thing since I left Hollywood. Before they weren't really on people's radars, it was more about genre. But I think tropes are important now. But it's also how your trope is gonna help them sell the project, not just sell it as in get Netflix to say yes. How is it gonna help get butts in the seats or butts in the on the couch?

Sara 1:22:52

Or on the screen, yeah. Yeah. Let's go back to talking about the pitch for a second because I meant to ask you this and I forgot. How do you reach people? Like, say you've done your research, you have your pitch. Do you have a recommended way of reaching out to people, how to find them to reach them?

SPEAKER_06 1:23:08

Yeah. So the the recommended way is IMDB Pro, which you do have to pay for. It does have a if you're like really, I like to be cognizant that a lot of people are on a tight budget. So if you're on a super tight budget, you can you get a 30-day free trial. So save up your research and get it all done in 30 days. Otherwise, uh a yearly plan. What's the paid version of the internet movie database, which people are familiar with? It looks very different than that because it has not just people's credits of things that have been made or that they've been in, but it has the things that are in development, which again is the term for all the stuff before we say yes, we're gonna make it. It has people's, it indicates whether if they have a production company, then it will have the contact, the email for the production company. It says who who their agents and managers are. It says, and those contact information. If it's a studio you can you're trying to talk to, you can go in and look and see the names of all the um people that work there.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:18

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:19

For studios and production companies, when you find an executive you want to talk to, go to LinkedIn then and confirm they're still there because IMDB Pro is not always up to date and people do move around a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:33

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:33

And so I think you're the guest before Bart, he mentioned that it's because it's really easy these days to find people's emails. And so that's how I recommend doing it. You can also, the other sneaky thing is if you learn that if you're trying to reach someone at a slightly bigger company or a studio and you learn the format of the emails, so you learn that like it's lindsay.hues at disney.com, then you have their email. Yeah, try it. You uh nine times out of ten, it works. Sometimes like there might be two Lindsay Hughes, and so one is like initials and one isn't. That's the most the easiest way. And sometimes if you just Google people, you can find their emails. It's pretty crazy. You know, I just got this random this was random email from this woman who was trying to track down my stepmother because a family friend knew my stepmother in a different city when they were both kids in the 1940s.

Jami 1:25:39

Oh my gosh. Wow.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:40

And she for her friend for the 99-year-old found me.

Sara 1:25:44

Oh yeah. So anyway, so you just have to do some searching.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:50

You have to do you take, yeah. It takes this whole process just to set expectations, it takes a lot of time. It's kind of sort of the equivalent to querying agents to do be a traditional publisher. So you have to decide how much time you want to spend doing it. But you could get your, you know, maybe spend some intense few weeks researching and then just spend a year emailing your targets too. You don't have to do it all at once. You also are probably also to set expectations, not gonna get rich the first time.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:25

As an unknown author, yeah, you know, you're not JK rolling or something. You're the offer is there, they you definitely deserve to be paid. Don't give away your book for free ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:36

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:36

But the the payment's not gonna be a huge amount of money. It's more for your bragging rights, I think. More for getting a dream come true of seeing your book on the screen and also and then marketing to tie it into your marketing.

Sara 1:26:50

Right. Yeah. Yeah. We talked to Bart about that a lot. So he talked about how he's doing that. The the movie to promote his writing.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:58

Yes. I would in doing research. I I read that the Queen's Gambit, the Netflix series. Yeah. Okay. So that book was published just in 1983.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:09

It didn't sell a lot of copies. It got a couple of good reviews. I think it might have won an award. It was not a well-known book. It hit the best seller list in 2020. Wow. When when the show came out.

Sara 1:27:21

It just shows you what can what it can do.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:23

Yeah.

Sara 1:27:24

It just cre increases the potential reader base you have, right? Because people can't visibility.

Jami 1:27:31

Is there anything we haven't talked about that you think we need to talk about before we let you go?

SPEAKER_06 1:27:36

Yes. If it's okay, real quick, I want to run through for your for your listeners the project version of a cocktail pitch. Okay. Because we talked personal. Because this is even more important in your email than your personal pitch. You want to grab them. This is the whole purpose of a cocktail pitch, like I said, is to get the producer to be like, oh, tell me more. So that's your goal. You're going to start off, you're going to talk about format and genre. So you're talking about your book. So your book plus your genre. And all of this, the goal for this whole thing is you're helping whoever's hearing or reading your pitch, your pitch. You're grounding them in your story world. So it makes them really easy to understand what your story is and who the audience would be, right? So that's why genre is important. Next, we're going to go to what I call touchstones. Sometimes in the book world, they're called comps. These are not books, movies and TV shows that are like your story, right? So there's three ways to use touchstones. The first one is the Hollywood way. X meets Y. This is X meets Y. So my example is this is frozen meets the Avengers. So even though it's corny, we've all heard that Hollywood talks this way, it works for a reason. You immediately know what that is. I mean, you don't know now. You still need to hear the story, but you're like, okay, this is something to do with fairy tales and superheroes. I like both of those things. Tell me more, right? The second way to use touchstones is to take your touchstone and put it in another setting. So I love high school stories. So I like to say this is frozen in high school. Again, I'm like, okay, it's a fairy tale sisters in high school. I'm intrigued. The third way is to co-op someone's audience. So you say this is for fans of the Princess Bride and Frozen. Then I'm like, okay, well, both of those are fairy tales. One's a romance, one's a comedy. Well, there's sisters. Okay, I'm getting the idea of what this is. Then you go to your emotional hook. And so this is the hardest thing in the pitch, I think. You got to think about what is the big emotional pull in your story. And because, like we were saying earlier, emotion sells. And you want to use this to make your character struggles relatable. So there's three ways to do this. The first is to use a metaphor, like elderly ants can be such a pill because they're always in your in your in your way, right? Or to use an archetype. I love archetypes. So the geeks versus the jocks, the cool kids and the losers, whatever it is. Or ask a question, which is which immediately draws people in. Like for Monsters Inc., it would be don't you remember when you were a kid and how it felt you were convinced there was a monster in the closet and you couldn't go to sleep and you were afraid to get up and like close the closet? And so you all of those things are emotional, and they're things that everyone has gone through, even the coolest kid in the world at some point didn't feel like one, right? So next you're gonna segue to your main character and their emotional drive. So my favorite thing to my favorite example in this is Katniss from The Hunger Games because she is just so badass, and what she does is so emotional. So Katniss is an ordinary ordinary 16-year-old girl whose sacrifice to save her sister's life starts a revolution. Now, I have a little bit more parts to the pitch, but I use like that example because to me, I feel like you're done with at that point. I am totally in. I'm like, what? What did she have to do to save her sister's life? Did she save her sister's life? And how did it start a revolution? I'm already all in. After that, if you need to, you can talk about your story appetizer, which is three to five sentences more about your story. And you want to focus on your main character and their what they're trying to accomplish and how they do it, right? So you don't want to talk about your magic system, you don't want to explain someone's backstory, you don't want to introduce five new characters here. All of that is great and so creative, but again, you're trying to introduce your idea to someone who's never heard it before, and you want to keep them grounded in the story. So it seems counterintuitive, but when you're pitching, especially this initial get their attention pitch, less is more. So, and finally, you want to end on a cliffhanger. This is not a tell the whole story situation. This is get people to lean in and tell and say, tell me more. Lean in, pick up the book, right? So the cliffhanger, you emphasize the emotional stakes and you're asking, can your character do it? You know, is Katniss going to save her sister's life? Is she gonna survive? You know, for a romance, is is Violet gonna meet the love of her life when she's sitting at the table at the wedding with all the the ants, you know? You know, are they gonna rob the bank and be able to pay for his brother's kidney transplant? Just and that's what you're gonna put in your email. Is your project cocktail pitch, which is asking a bunch of questions and not answering them. So they want to answer them, they're gonna have to say, okay, I'll let me read your book. But it's kind of like a verbal movie trailer if you think about it. The best movie trailers don't, I mean, a lot of them do now, sadly, but the best ones don't show you everything and they don't tell you the ending.

Sara 1:33:22

Whether or not you want to pitch Hollywood, this is great. It gives a framework, pitching things to readers, maybe changing up blurbs, things like that. I think it it can be really helpful. That's what we really want to capture is the emotion. We want people invested.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:39

Oh, yay. I'm glad you find it helpful. I I definitely use it for blurbs. I mean, sometimes you blurbs need a little bit more stuff in there, but if and and it can depend on the genre. If you're telling a romance, then yes, you can have two people in your cocktail pitch. But you really, really want to keep it clean and simple. And it and once you kind of learn both of these, how to pitch yourself in your project, it's just networking is a lot less scary. Yeah. Because you know how to talk about your stuff in a way that found is interesting and isn't braggy and all the things.

Jami 1:34:12

So that's great. Well, you've talked about your book, how to pitch what's it called?

SPEAKER_06 1:34:18

It's called How to Sell Your Book to Hollywood, how to pitch your book, find the right producer, and navigate the deal.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:24

Okay. When is it available?

SPEAKER_06 1:34:26

Well, I'm aiming for the beginning of the summer, but I am with my creative endeavors, things always take longer than I think. But I am almost finished writing it. So it's just probably the production side of things. But if your listeners would love, would like to hear when it goes on sale, you can they can sign up at booktohollywood.com. Okay. And I'll also be giving them as a thank you for that some some goodies, including the cocktail pitch formula, so they don't have to remember it. And I'll I'll send that to y'all too.

Jami 1:34:58

That'll be great. That'll be great. Well, tell people where they can find out more about you and all the things you do.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:04

Thank you. So you can find about out about me at the pitchmaster.com. And there's way uh you can sign up for my newsletter there and then see how what I teach and how I work with people one-on-one. And please sign up to be notified about the new book at booktohollywood.com.

Jami 1:35:22

Very good. Very good. Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been fantastic.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:28

Thank you. I had such a good time. I really, I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Sara 1:35:33

We were glad to have you. So we'll have all those links in the show notes, and we will see everybody next time. Bye, everyone. Bye.