⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Verified Purchase – The Script-Selling Game: A Hollywood Insider’s Look at Getting Your Script Sold and Produced / By Kathie Fong Yoneda
Ms. Yoneda slices through industry jargon and protocol barriers to arm readers with the requisite communication tools for script-sale success.
From my vantage as a Marketing and Business Analyst, her spot-on industry advice honors the time-tested principles of good marketing common to all industries and testifies to rule 1: Know Thy Audience. Specifically, know and empathize with the needs of oft forgotten gatekeepers and decision-influencers crucial to any big-ticket corporate sale.
Ms. Yoneda properly places on the writer/seller all responsibility for assessing prospective customers’ needs and tailoring all communication to clearly address those needs. She then kindly guides readers through the gauntlet of creating and executing a strategic marketing plan for their scripts, including techniques for assessing a script’s market readiness.
Ms. Yoneda gives writers empathy for bean counters. Too often perceptions drawn from the creative medium in which studios and production companies invest overshadow their capitalistic imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. Ms. Yoneda makes this dry reality palatable by detailing the competing industry priorities that must be negotiated to alignment before scripts move to production. Most importantly, she shares the assessment rubrics used at each phase along the way.
Ms. Yoneda’s fulfills a clear agenda to empower great writers with great sales skills and the motivation to perservere. Refreshingly unlike other books on the subject, she offers encouragement, without venting pent up frustration or harsh judgments on unsuspecting readers. Bravo.
I believe Kathie Fong Yoneda could easily repackage her work under the title The Venture-Capital Financing Game and sell many more books.
I recommend The Script-Selling Game as required reading for anyone outside the entertainment industry looking in, or inside trying get ahead.