There’s no shortage of writers. Over 30,000 scripts are WGA registered each year. About 100,000 books are copyrighted. If each writer produced one project each year, that would give us 130,000 writers. My guess would be twice or thrice that, if you define a writer as someone who thinks he’s a writer. Whatever your math, no doubt there are many, many, many more almost-writers than writers. And there are many, many more writers than there are jobs. So writers seek help to become good, and to be recognized.

My business is to help writers find the opening to a closed system. My company, The Insiders System for Writers, critiques books and scripts and we publish a magazine that introduces writers to agents, publishers and producers. Over the past seven years, business has been good for me and for the writers I've helped get ready and get read. But the business of helping writers has been getting harder lately; and it's harder for new writers to know what to do.

Other people help writers. The how-to’s began with Aristotle, but lately, the bookstores’ writing shelves have overflowed. Linda Seger pioneered script consulting in 1981, and encouraged Donie Nelson to open Career Strategies for Writers in 1985. Most colleges have a small or large writing program, and writers’ conferences and for-profit writing seminars have proliferated. There are also writers groups in every city, a dozen magazines and hundreds of Web sites. Writers risk becoming professional students rather than writers, unless their goals are clear. Success in writing is about staying in the chair long enough to get all the ideas and training onto the page and create a finished product… or at least a first draft.

Other people critique books and scripts--hundreds of them--in variously priced reports ranging from 3--0 pages. (My clients get 8-10 pages, like development notes). Many script consultants and book doctors--too many to name--are excellent at their work, and very dedicated. However, there are others who think it beats waiting tables between writer or producer gigs, so writers have to choose carefully. The only writers who don’t need consultants are those who have friends knowledgeable, candid and generous enough to tell them what’s working or what isn’t in the project. If the friends don’t know, won’t say or can’t be bothered, writers should get professional feedback, because few agents, publishers or producers take time to tell writers more than YES or NO.

Other people help writers connect to agents, producers and publishers in the growing "alternative access" field. Since the shady Hollywood Producers Directory unceremoniously folded in the late '80s, it’s been an uphill battle for alternative access. For a long time after my 1993 writers Showcase magazine launch, I was nearly alone in this field, publishing a collection of pages that introduce pre-screened books and scripts with a logline, an author’s own words and a box score, for an 80% request rate. Rivals came and went until Eva Peel’s Spec Script Marketplace started successfully presenting loglines in newsletter format in 1996. Writers can even pitch executives face-to-face at writers’ conferences, lunch events and Peel’s quarterly PitchSessions. Writers who don’t have cousins, lovers and ex-roommates in high places need every possible chance to get their work to decisionmakers, from query letters to screenplay contests. Outside NY and LA, this may be the only access available. The discouragers say the odds are small. But not trying at all doesn’t improve the odds.

The newest help for writers is on the Internet. The technology makes it possible to give decisionmakers access to searchable databases of scripts or ideas at relatively low cost (except start-up and advertising). The market must look good; a new dot-com for writers seems to appear almost every week. Many of the new sites have some relationship to production or management companies looking for new material and revenue (not necessarily in that order). Some offer coverage; others promise to recommend good enough projects to one or more firms. In fact, online databases may still be more promise than performance. I added an on line database to my services a year or so ago, and publishing writers Showcase in magazine form and on line has shown me that habits haven’t caught up to technology; more agents and buyers want to browse on paper than on screen. Additionally writers should be concerned about who has access to their ideas--the better sites only give passwords to reputable and active agents and buyers. However, many decisionmakers only know they want "something good," so searching by genre doesn’t help them.

Overall, it’s hard for writers to choose among so many different consultants and alternative access opportunities. In addition to looking at qualifications and rapport, writers, and buyers and representatives should ask some hard questions. Is there a conflict of interest when a consultant is also a writer, manager or producer? It’s not a new question: New York’s Scott Meredith Agency has been selling critiques for decades. Are they blameless if writers hope too hard that paying might lead to representation? When consultants and alternative access providers are also looking for material for representation or production companies, are they are getting paid to evaluate material that their competitors evaluate as part of the cost of doing business? No question; the rules are changing, everywhere. But I’ve encountered hostility all my professional life from writers who felt taken advantage of by someone else: dishonest book doctors, predatory subsidy publishers, clumsy consultants, ineffective agents, slimy or rude producers.

Standards start at home, of course. It's no good wishing business would get easier; my wish has to be that the quality of my analysis and the value of my personal connection to writers and buyers shine in a cluttered marketplace. Writers can ask questions of the person who read their script. Agents, publishers and producers can get me on the phone and quiz me about each project. I try to make an impersonal business personal. The Insiders System has led writers to representation and deals, better writing and bigger contact lists. I've worked with over seven hundred writers, all over the country and all over the world. Even if the business is harder, more gimmicky, and more seductive to writers who want the easy way in, I care about writers and their stories and I intend to stay in business for a long time. Doing the right thing isn't getting easier, but it's getting more important.

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