Thursday, October 19, 2006

As John August points out, Final Draft sold 35,000 licenses last year. Figure at least than many people bought it the year before. Figure Movie Magic Screenwriter accounts for another chunk of the screenwriting world and... gotta figure there are 100,000 people out there at least trying to write a screenplay.

Dang. That is a lot of competition.

Glad producers are optioning my projects. Also glad I sent in a pitch for a new comic today to DC Vertigo. Why in comics, as John Rogers says, you can make fives of thousands of dollars.

Of course, the numbers aren't that meaningful. It isn't a lottery. You are competing only with the people who are as good or better than you are. You might only be competing with ten thousand people. If you're competing with only one thousand people, you probably get work. If you're competing with only a hundred people, you are likely debating whether to buy, and tear down, your neighbor's 1930's Bel Air ranch house so you can put in an Olympic pool.

Still. You better get cracking!

4:04 PM

4 Comments:

Vertigo you say? Tell me more!

By  Kody Chamberlain, at 5:10 PM  

I find it mildly amusing that I asked in the comments what it is that some people feel FD lacks, and what other programs lack; what do they want that they aren't getting, and despite the moderate amount of complaining I see around the net, not one person has said anything.

Despite what some people say, celtx is slower and more bloated than FD is (a sin for open source) and tries to do too many things, and therefore does no one thing well.

I think we could really use another player.

By  Anonymous, at 9:48 PM  

In roleplaying game writing you can make fives of tens of dollars!

By  Steve Peterson, at 12:15 AM  

Alarmists can make statistics say mean anything they say.
How many of those programs are FD users switching to MM, and vice-versa? How many are prizes for competitions given to winners who already have some version?
How many are being used by people who think all they need to do to write a script is have the right software (story structure be damned)?
Judging from the quality of unpublished scripts posted online... there's a LOT of those!
I'm speccing for features - how many FD users are writing shorts, TV, or animation?
I wouldn't get scared off because 100,000 people have software cluttering up their hard drives.
I'd worry about the unrevised screenplay cluttering up mine.

Mama Writes

By  Milehimama @ Mama Says, at 3:24 PM  

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