How to Market a Screenplay Online
Marketing a screenplay can be hard enough when you live in Hollywood, but it can seem like an impossibility when you live a thousand or more miles away from the silver screen capital of the world. Thanks to the Internet, a new world has opened for those who don’t live in Hollywood but would like to get their screenplays in front of the movers and shakers of Tinseltown.
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Instructions
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Write a killer logline for your screenplay. This is a single sentence of about 25 words that tells your entire story. A number of websites have information on how to write loglines, including the discussion boards at Absolute Write and Done Deal Pro.
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Write a short synopsis of your story. This should be no more than a page. Then write a second, longer synopsis of two or more pages adding more details. Different agents and producers and websites will ask for either a short one-pager or a longer version.
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Post your logline on a number of free sites like Winning Scripts and Hollywood Lit Sales. Winning Scripts does not require that your screenplay be a contest winner, and for an extra fee you can list your short synopsis and a script excerpt. Hollywood Lit Sales has a deal where a production company gets a first look at all loglines submitted, so make sure yours is the best it can be.
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List your logline, synopsis and script on InkTip. Although not a free service, InkTip has dozens of agents, producers and production companies that search the listings looking for their next projects.
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Enter contests online. Most contests will get good scripts into industry hands for reading. A good place to start is by checking the current contests at Movie Bytes.
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Write down the names of the producers and production houses the next time you watch a film in that genre. Find their websites so you can submit your screenplay online or send a query.
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Tips & Warnings
Many sites like Done Deal Pro offer, for a fee, a listing of production houses, producers and agents who accept a query letter from writers.
Fade In magazine has a publication called "The Hollywood Guide to Hollywood Producers," which lists over a thousand producers and production houses along with the type of material they are looking for.
Never pay a company that charges a reading fee before they will look at your script. These companies, almost always, are scams.
