“Hollywood snaps up hot ebook titles”
The Spirit of the Spec is busting out all over, even with ebooks. From Variety:
With the “50 Shades of Grey” series hitting 10 million sales this week, ebooks are emerging as a sexy new source of material for Hollywood. The majors are keeping a close eye on digital bestseller lists and showing a willingness to pay traditional book-rights fees for digital titles — provided they come with built-in brand awareness.
The hunt to option such titles is heating up after a handful of high-profile sales of ebooks, many self-published, including April’s $3 million sale of “50 Shades” to Universal. Observers credit “Shades” with paving the way for subsequent sales of “Wool” and “On the Island,” both of which sold for big bucks despite the fact that both went straight to Kindles and iPads without going through major publishers.
“As we’ve known for years and years, the studios have been much more interested in brands, whether that’s a board game or video game or traditional book,” said Steve Fisher, veep of APA and a literary agent who represents books-to-films deals. “The last couple of deals have really indicated a huge willingness on the part of studios and other buyers to be open to ebooks in a way they hadn’t been before.”
Fisher most recently repped the author of “On the Island,” a romance eBook which MGM snapped up (Daily Variety, May 14). Tome by Des Moines, Iowa resident Tracey Garvis-Graves spent five weeks on the New York Times bestseller list before the Lion forked over a low- to mid-six-figure fee.
“The effect is that they’re looking more closely than ever at the ebook list for the original ebook bestsellers,” said Jody Hotchkiss, a literary agent with Hotchkiss and Associates.
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“Studios have signalled that they don’t care whether it’s an ebook or a hardbook because, ultimately, they bring the same kind of brand awareness that they so value,” Fisher said.
Studios are willing to pay for that brand awareness. In a non-competitive situation, traditional book rights often fetch between $150,000 to $250,000 — a range that now applies to popular e-fare.
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“Studios and major buyers out here were taking their book scouts’ calls a lot more quickly and suddenly paying attention to New York in a way that I hadn’t seen in years,” Fisher said of the immediate effect of the “50 Shades” sale. “I think that any qualms that buyers had about getting behind an ebook … (are) gone.”
The essence of the Spirit of the Spec is to create content and put it out there because you never know what can happen. Ebooks are the new poster child of this philosophy. If your story doesn’t work as a screenplay, why not write it as an ebook?
Curious: How many of you read more ebooks now than print books?
Finally there is this interesting tidbit from the article:
According to data from research firm Publishers Marketplace, film and TV producers bought rights to 209 books last year and 79 so far this year. Very few of those were ebooks, and nearly all sold before they were published.
So let’s compare the numbers of books sold to spec scripts sold:
2011: 209 books / 110 spec scripts. Just about 2-to-1.
2012 [through today]: 79 books / 52 spec scripts. A lot more spec scripts selling compared to books percentage-wise than last year. Yet another sign that the spec script market is expanding.
For the rest of the Variety article, go here.
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