Full Details and Terms of My eBay Auction
Thursday December 14th 2006, 11:33 am
Filed under: My Ebay Auction
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This post contains the full auction offer and details, as posted on the actual auction page at eBay.


Hello, my name is Lance Brown. I’m a developing screenwriter and author, and I’m offering an extraordinary opportunity for the right investor.

I’m selling 50% of my earnings on any 5 of my 13 in-development writing projects to the highest bidder of $30,000 or more.

This deal includes 50% of all my received earnings from the chosen projects, whether it be for writing, acting, directing, producing, or any other work connected to them. It also includes my received earnings from any sequels, remakes, or any other versions or adaptations of those projects. (See below for the full details.)

I have structured this deal to maximize the likelihood of the winning bidder/investor making a great deal of money off of me successfully launching my screenwriting career, and to maximize my ability to get my career off to a running start:

  • The number of projects included, and the broad sweep of what earnings are included, aim to maximize the chance that the investor will “get lucky” and have significant amounts of money flow in from the success of some or all of the chosen projects.
  • The amount of the minimum bid was selected to provide me with two things: a full year during which I can focus my full time and energy toward writing my screenplays and effectively bringing them to market, and the basic resources needed to properly do that.

I have been preparing my projects and this proposal for two years (and have been growing toward this as a writer for 20 years), and I am now extremely ready to make the most of this opportunity. In fact, I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.

The only question is: Who will seize the moment with me, and be the other half of this win-win situation?

Below you will find a lot more details about this offer. For more information about my writing qualifications or the Project Choices below, please e-mail me or call me at 530-274-2474. I can provide you with a screenwriting sample, along with other examples of my writing, and testimonials about my writing and editing skills, and more information about the projects that you would be choosing from.

One lucky person is going to have the chance to make me one lucky person—and then we’ll both be lucky together!

Happy bidding!

-Lance Brown
Nevada City, CA

Sections:

  1. Overview

  2. Included Revenues

  3. What is not included

  4. Project Choices

  5. How it will work

  6. Potential earnings estimates

  7. Other details

1. Overview

You are bidding on: 50% of any revenues I receive in connection with 5 writing projects of your choice (from the selection of 13 projects-in-development listed below).

2. Included Revenues

Any money that I receive in connection with any of the 5 chosen works will be included in the revenues that will be shared with the winning bidder.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The included revenues only includes what I finally receive, after any fees that get deducted from my earnings off-the-top–such as agents’, managers’, or lawyers’ fees–have been deducted. (At present, I don’t have any of those, but once my career gets going, I may retain one or more of those folks to help out.) If I have representation of that sort, those folks get their percentage of my earnings before I get what’s left. You are bidding on half of what I get, after those folks have been paid.

Extra revenues (from derivative works, sequels, other jobs, etc.) are included too.

Any derivative works that may stem from the 5 chosen projects are also included in the offer, as will all types of jobs that I might be hired to do in relation to them, or revenue that might come from them. This has four major applications:

Sequels/series: Should any of the works spawn a sequel (or spin-off) or become part of a series of works dealing with the same characters in the same fictional universe, all the subsequent related projects would be included in the revenue sharing.

Adaptations: Any versions of any of the chosen works, in whatever medium, will be included in the revenue sharing. An audiobook version of a novel is a good example, but a children’s book becoming an animated series, a novel being adapted into a screenplay, or characters being adapted into a comic book are all possibilities too–and there are more. (NOTE: I definitely intend to adapt the novels listed into screenplays, so each of the novels can and should be considered to include two projects–the novel, and its adaptation into a screenplay.)

Merchandising: This would cover anything like action figures, clothing, soundtracks and so on - any products related to the chosen projects. Revenues I may make from those are also included in this deal.

Other roles/jobs: If I happen to end up acting in a movie I wrote, or directing, or producing, or if I get hired to read for the audiobook version of a novel, or get any other types of work on the chosen projects (or their derivative projects), the revenues I get from those jobs will also be included in this deal.

3. What is not included

These are things that are not part of this offer.

Not included: Any money I make that is not in payment for one of the 5 chosen projects or related works as specified above under Included Revenues.

Not included: Revenue from a job on another unrelated project, where one of the 5 chosen projects “opened the door” to the other job.

Not included: Any form of final approval or creative control by the bidder over the works themselves.

Not included: Any role in the financial negotiations or contracting process when I sell the works or am hired for jobs related to them.

Not included: Any ownership of the projects or written works covered under this deal.

Not included: Any form of legal partnership.

WE ARE SIMPLY SPLITTING (IN HALF) WHATEVER REVENUES I RECEIVE AS OUTLINED UNDER ‘INCLUDED REVENUES’ ABOVE. NO OTHER ARRANGEMENT, PARTNERSHIP, EMPLOYMENT, OR ANYTHING ELSE IS IMPLIED OR AGREED TO.

4. Project Choices

The winning bidder can choose from any of the following in-development projects. (Some of the projects’ names have been withheld.):

Working Title Type Genre

All of these projects are works in progress, and I have already gone through much of the exploring, preparation, and outlining needed to create the finished products. They are ready to be written. (One project–the screenplay Independent Study–is about 1/3 done, and I expect it to be completed in February 2007.)

5. Potential Earnings Estimates

Novel
A first novel from an unpublished author will generally earn that author somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000, unless his or her book generates an especially impressive amount of sales. Payment for second and subsequent novels tend to be dependent on how well the previous book or books sold, and whether the new book is in the same genre, or is a sequel to an earlier book.

However, each of my novels is also intended to be adapted, by me or someone else, into a screenplay. Compensation for that would fall under the guidelines below.

Screenplay
There is no standard pay rate for a screenplay. However, the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) minimums are enforced upon projects sold by member writers, and also serve as a market guideline for non-guild projects. The major studios all comply with the WGA minimums. You can see their full fee guidelines at their website. (Look under Writer’s Resources–>Contracts & Compensation. The relevant figures are on page 3 of the 2004 Schedule of Minimums.)

The Writers’ Guild minimum rate for a screenplay for a high budget film (with a budget above $5,000,000) is $106,070.
The Writers’ Guild minimum rate for a screenplay for a low budget film (with a budget below $5,000,000) is $56,500.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The fees listed here are for screenplay “assignments” where the writer is hired in advance by a studio to write a specific project. The screenplays in this auction, once completed, will generally be “spec” screenplays (written without pay on speculation that they can be sold). Due to the risk involved in speculative writing, and because they are completed projects that can be fully evaluated in advance, spec screenplays tend to earn much higher fees, and minimums tend to start at around double the minimums for hired screenplays.

Another note: Fees for screenplays can and often do range into the low-to-medium hundred thousand dollar range. Really big screenplays can sell for millions of dollars, even to newer or first-time writers.

Wikipedia’s “Screenplay” page has more information about the distinction between spec and assignment writing, as well as a link to a page titled “List of highest-priced speculative screenplays,” which lists dozens of multi-million-dollar screenplay sales.


Compounding success

One of the reasons this auction includes five projects is because a writer’s value in the fields of fiction and screenwriting tend to increase substantially after the first project is sold–and it often continues to increase with each subsequent sale. Once I have sold one of these projects, my chances of selling another one of them will be much higher, and so will the potential for earnings.

And having five projects makes that first sale more likely too…

Making the first sale

A first-time writer is in a much better position to appeal to an agent or publisher if the writer has more than one project to offer. “What else do you have?” and “What else are you writing?” are questions that a first-time writer needs to be prepared for–and having a second (and third) completed script or manuscript ready is the best way to do that.

6. How it will work

  1. Once you have won the auction, you will send at least $7500 via check, money order, bank transfer, or PayPal, within 72 hours of the close of auction. The total bid amount is due within 10 days of the close of auction. (No more than $7500 total may be sent via PayPal. The rest may be sent via check, money order, or bank transfer.
  2. Once the first payment has been made, we’ll have a lengthy conversation, or series of conversations, about my current projects-in-development and potential strategies and options involving them.
  3. You will have until one month from the close of auction to notify me in writing which 5 projects you want included in this deal. During that month, I will focus my work time on providing you with the information you need to make your choice, while also working to complete my first draft screenplay, which is already underway. As you narrow down your choices, I will provide whatever notes and background information I can for my projects, so you can decide which you want to include.
  4. You can make your decision sooner than in one month if you choose, by notifying me in writing of your 5 chosen projects, and of your choice to waive the remaining decision time.
  5. Once the 5 projects have been chosen and we have discussed the strategic options, I will continue to work full time (60 hours a week or more) toward launching my career by completing my projects-in-development and bringing them to market.
  6. I will give you a progress report via phone or e-mail:
    -once a week for the first year after close of auction
    -once a month during the second year after close of auction
    -once per quarter in subsequent years, up to the end of the fifth year after close of auction
  7. In addition to checking in, I will send you (via e-mail) updated versions of the 5 chosen projects as they progress, on a weekly basis until they are completed. (This becomes void in the case that a non-disclosure agreement prohibits me from sharing a particular work with you. This could theoretically happen if I were hired on assignment to write or re-write one of my projects.)
  8. When I make a sale (or option, or any other deal) and receive payment on one of the 5 chosen projects as outlined under “Included Revenues” above, I will send you a payment for 50% of what I receive within 30 days of my receipt of it. (After the first time, it will probably be my accountant or lawyer who actually sends the payment on my behalf.)
  9. The process outlined in step 8 will continue for as long as any of the 5 chosen projects generate revenue as outlined under “Included Revenues” above.

7. Other Details

Overall deals

If I should happen to get an “overall deal” from either a studio or publishing house–where I am hired for multiple projects in advance, together in one deal–the revenue to be shared will be determined by dividing the overall deal amount by the number of chosen projects included in the deal, in equal shares. Each chosen project that ends up as part of the overall deal would be considered to have earned one of those equal shares.

Example: If the deal is for 3 novels and the fee is $90,000, each novel will be considered to have earned a $30,000 share of that. If one of those novels is a chosen project from this auction deal, then $30,000 would be the shared revenue. If two of the novels are chosen projects, then $60,000 would be the shared revenue amount.

Additional revenues on projects within the overall deal which are tied to a specific project, such as the sales-based royalties on each individual novel in the above example, would be included in this deal, but only for chosen projects–not for other, unrelated projects in the overall deal.

Timing of payments to winner

I will send the buyer his or her money within 30 business days of when I take possession of any applicable payments I might receive. For example, if I get a check, the 30 days starts once that check has cleared and the money is in my account.


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“The Birth of a Career” - based on a true story
Tuesday December 12th 2006, 11:52 am
Filed under: My Ebay Auction
1 Comment

(Read about my past employment and my history with writing and editing here.)

In late 2003, I asked myself, for the first time since 1994, what it was I’d like to be doing for a career, given all the available choices. In 1994, the answer to that question was entrepreneurialism, and running my own business. In 2003, it didn’t take me very long to figure out that if I had my druthers, I’d be writing for a living. Writing was the one thing I had been doing consistently since I was a young adult. It was the thing I was best at, and the thing I most enjoyed…and after almost 20 years of toying with it, I was ready to get serious and start writing things that people would buy and publish.

To keep a long story from becoming an epic, that realization led me to a lot of self-directed career counseling, which led me to novel writing and then screenwriting. There are a lot of things that factored in to bring that about at that time, which I’m not going into because it’s not that interesting. Suffice it to say that I’d like to thank IFC, Dinner for Five, The Internet Movie Database, Inside the Actor’s Studio (with special thanks to Sylvester Stallone), my local cable access television station FCAT (now NCTV), my local community radio station KVMR, and the person or persons who invented the digital voice recorder, to name just a few of the forces that helped me on my journey of realization.

(Which is to say that I did not just wake up one day and go, “A ha, I think I’ll be a writer! Maybe making movies would be fun!” If I had to pick two of the earliest seeds of this trend, I would say it was getting certified as a broadcaster on the public access TV station, and getting a digital voice recorder so that I could stop just having ideas, and start collecting them, and building on them, instead. Both of those developments, forming the beginning of the snowball, were back in 2002. And the creative interests preceding all that had been forming since I was a young child.)

In the past 2 years, I’ve added several layers to my already thick bed of learning about English and writing, and I’ve grown my tiny twig of knowledge about the business of writing into a nice, hearty sapling–ready to be whipped around by the wind and rains of the industry, if you will.

During the same time, I’ve been developing projects, largely in recorded notes on my voice recorder. (Many dozens of hours of recorded notes.) The oldest of these, a children’s book called Chester’s Adventure on Lost Lake, was sketched out just over two years ago.

There are 12 more writing projects which I have been developing over the past two years that I consider serious and worth following through to completion. They are at many different stages of development, in the sense that some have a lot of notes and have been incubating for a long time while others are more loosely sketched and younger, but they all share one common trait: they are ready to be written.

I have done just about all I can (or should) do for them in voice-recorded notes and outlines, and the rest of the project requires serious sit-down writing time—and in many cases, research time or transcribing time. (And of course they will all need rewriting, and editing, and then to be submitted and marketed until they are sold.) I estimate that roughly 200 hours or work time per project is needed to get each one done and into the buyers’ market in an effective way.

Aside from being ready to be written, each of the 13 projects also meet two important criteria: a) it is a commercially viable and complete story, and b) I am able to write and finish it.

Which is to say that I have had writing ideas which were not commercially viable, and have had story ideas which ended up not holding together after full examination. These 13 projects which remain standing have been scrutinized to make sure they actually work and can do their job - i.e., be bought, published, produced, etc.

And I am also saying that there are projects which I may not (yet) be able or ready to write, for whatever reason. I’ll go one further and say that many of these projects have been waiting until I was ready to write them. That’s especially true for the screenplays, since I had a learning curve to conquer in terms of the screenplay format and expectations, but it’s also true for the novels, because for a very long time I was daunted by the idea of composing a whole novel. I came to realize a couple years ago that that time had passed, but it took a while to accept my new parameters, I think.

And now I’ve done enough new learning and career training, and enough practicing and preparing. My projects have incubated long enough - more than long enough in some cases. They are ripe and ready. So am I…I’ve never felt this good about any sort of writing, or really any creative or productive activity I’ve ever done before. (And that’s coming from a pretty “creative and productive activity”-laden life perspective.)

I finally picked a project to get started on, and I’ve been writing in whatever free time I can find for the past two months now. The experience has confirmed for me that the stars are actually all aligned toward the notion that it’s time for me to accelerate my writing career. And perhaps just as importantly, it has confirmed for me what was previously just a strong theory: that I am ready now to turn my developing projects into finished written works that I can sell. The sooner the better, frankly. I’m over-ready. Crazy ready.

I’ve gotten a good feel for my ability to actually crank out screenplay pages in some quantity, and I’m confident that if I were able to devote 2007 to writing full-time, I’d be able to have at least 5 finished drafts, with 3 of those completed and “making the rounds” by year’s end. I think that’s being conservative, but I don’t want to speculate too much about the calendar of events, especially because a lot of this planning will hopefully be done under the influence of the choices and desires of the winning bidder in my ebay auction. (I’ll also be spending a lot of time doing career-related things that aren’t linked to specific projects—like continuing to learn more about writing, for example.)

I do think it’s safe to say that I’ll be ready to send out at least two finished screenplays by the halfway point of 2007. (I expect to be finished with my first one by February—and I’ll begin drafting my second one during that time too, since the first one will have to rest for a while as part of the final editing process.) And folks who know about breaking into screenwriting will probably agree that having two finished scripts and two more in progress—as long as they are all good, of course—is a pretty good position to be in. (And they will all be good—that’s what all that incubating and preparation was for.)

And I can keep going like this for as long as I need to. I plan to write all of my 13 projects into completed works, each of which I will work to sell, publish, or get produced, using whatever (ethical) means necessary. It’s really just a matter of time. Either I eek out my new career in tiny fits and spurts, taking who knows how long until I find my big break…or I hit the ground running, and spend 2007 making the most of the opportunity that my overdeveloped writing engine is offering me.

I will pursue this path and succeed either way, but the quantum leap that I could make if I dedicated the next year full-time to this pursuit is so great that I am willing to part with half of whatever I earn on 5 of my projects to one lucky visionary who will help me do that.

One lucky visionary…like you. You have found yourself in the right place at just the right time in my life, and you have a chance to reap the rewards of that synchronicity. I’m giving away 50% of my earnings on 5 projects of your choosing, if you are the winning bidder in my innovative eBay auction. The bidding starts at $30,000, which is an amount calculated to allow me to spend a year focusing on writing full-time and bringing my projects to fruition and to market.

I can’t tell you for sure how it will work out if you decide to be that visionary bidder, but I can tell you what I know. I know that I am going to be a successful screenwriter. That’s not dependent on this eBay auction thing working out, but it it will go a lot more smoothly, and quickly, if I find a sponsor.

I mean visionary. I mean angel. Genius. Godsend. The win to my win. (You know—in the win-win situation?)

Feel free to contact me at lance@lancebrown.org or 530-274-2474 if you have any questions, or just want to know some more about me or the projects that are part of this auction.


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