Dear Movie Screen Producers of the world,

I have a rather unusual proposition for you.

Would you be interested in making a movie about Hollywood making a complete disaster of a movie?

I'm an Australian, Brisbane based author seeking an experienced production partner to option or acquire the screen adaptation rights to my recently published novel, The Book's a Lot Better Than the Movie.

It's a satirical comedy-drama with a premise that practically writes its own publicity campaign.

The story follows Localad, a sixty-four-year-old bookseller who has spent twenty years writing his masterpiece, Purradise. When a Hollywood producer unexpectedly discovers his manuscript, Localad finds himself catapulted from a failing coastal bookshop into the spectacular absurdity of the film industry.

What follows is an increasingly outrageous collision between artistic integrity and commercial ambition, as studio executives systematically transform his deeply personal novel into a blockbuster disaster.

But Hollywood's failure is only half the story.

When Localad independently publishes his original manuscript, readers re-discover what the studio overlooked. The novel becomes an unexpected literary sensation, and its author must decide whether success means accepting Hollywood's money or finally believing in the value of his own work.

The result is a warm, character-driven comedy about creativity, second chances, the entertainment industry and the rather inconvenient habit of ordinary people refusing to behave as expected.

I believe the novel offers an appealing feature-film opportunity, combining sharp industry satire with a genuinely uplifting emotional story.

I'm therefore seeking an established producer interested in developing the property for the screen. My preference is to option or sell the adaptation rights and allow an experienced creative team to fully bring the story to life.

A complete manuscript and producer synopsis are available, and I'd be delighted to forward them should the project interest you.

After all, there's something wonderfully irresistible about Hollywood adapting a book that warns authors against trusting Hollywood.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Andy Robinson

Author | The Book's a Lot Better Than the Movie

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0645493953

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 8 BILLION PEOPLE OF THE EARTH, WHO STILL HAVEN'T BOUGHT MY BOOK.

Dear Humanity,

We really need to talk.

I've been patient.

I've been understanding.

I've even resisted the temptation to stand outside shopping centres screaming at strangers.

But enough is enough.

There are approximately EIGHT BILLION people on this planet.

Eight. Billion.

That's eight thousand million potential customers, excluding those who cannot read, those who are currently deceased, and people who believe the Earth is flat, although frankly, I'm still prepared to negotiate with that last group.

And yet, despite this extraordinary pool of prospective literary enthusiasts, an alarming number of you have still failed to purchase my novel.

THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE.

I find this behaviour deeply troubling.

What exactly are you all doing?

Eating?

Sleeping?

Working?

Spending money on electricity, groceries and other frivolous luxuries?

WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU ALL? PRIORITIES, PEOPLE.

I didn't spend countless hours hunched over a keyboard, developing fictional characters with more interesting lives than my own, just so you could wander about buying avocados, subscribing to only fans profiles and keeping your mortgages up to date.

Do you have any idea how much emotional damage goes into writing a novel?

I've killed characters I loved.

I've saved characters I despised.

I've spent entire afternoons deciding whether a fictional man should raise his left eyebrow or his right.

I've argued with imaginary people and LOST.

At one point, I even became emotionally invested in the future of a fictional bookshop. Not to mention that damned bell.

AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

You've gone to Bunnings.

You've bought an air fryer.

You've watched seventeen consecutive episodes of a television programme about people renovating bathrooms while screaming at each other.

But have you bought my book?

NO, GREGORY. YOU HAVEN'T. AND NEITHER HAVE YOU KAREN!

And don't think I haven't noticed, because I sure as hell did.

Now, I appreciate that some of you may be experiencing financial difficulties.

Others may be living in remote regions without reliable internet access.

Some may be new-born infants who have yet to develop the necessary motor skills to successfully navigate Amazon.

EXCUSES. ALL OF THEM!!

My novel tells the story of a struggling bookseller whose beloved manuscript falls into the hands of Hollywood, where it is subjected to the creative wisdom of executives who couldn't successfully adapt a shopping list without adding a car chase, three explosions and a romantic subplot involving a helicopter and a botox enhanced pair of lips.

It's a story about ambition, dreams, betrayal, resilience, artistic integrity and the breath-taking stupidity of people who earn considerably more money than they deserve.

In other words, it's practically a documentary on the entertainment industry.

And it's available now on AMAZON.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0645493953

Not hidden in a cave.

Not buried beneath an ancient temple.

Not guarded by a three-headed dragon demanding the answer to a riddle.

AMAZON.

The same place you bought that rechargeable electric potato peeler you used once before putting it in a drawer.

You know how to find it. You've been there before.

Now, I'm not threatening anyone here, I'm simply pointing out that I have a keyboard, an internet connection, a deeply questionable sense of humour and apparently far too much free time.

This situation could become considerably more embarrassing for everyone involved.

Imagine the headlines.

LOCAL AUTHOR FORCED TO GET REAL JOB AFTER EIGHT BILLION PEOPLE REFUSE TO COOPERATE.

YOU DIDN'T BUY MY BOOK IN ORDER TO MAKE ME JUST AN UNDER-APPRECIATED AUTHOR RATHER THAN JUST UNEMPLOYED.

Do you want that on your conscience?

DO YOU?

Do you want to be responsible for me having to attend meetings, wear sensible trousers and use phrases like "circling back" and "leveraging synergies"?

Of course you don't.

You're better people than that.

I hope.

So here's what I propose.

You buy my book.

I stop publicly questioning the moral integrity of the entire human race.

See, it's a win win for everyone.

And if you've already purchased a copy, thank you. You are clearly a person of extraordinary intelligence, impeccably good taste and suspiciously good breeding.

Now please leave me an Amazon review. There's a good chap.

Five stars would be ideal.

Anything less will be interpreted as a cry for help.

So, in summary...

THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE

Available NOW on Amazon.

Buy it. Read it. Recommend it.

Or simply buy a copy and leave it prominently displayed in your home so visitors can at least think that you're cultured.

I'm an independent author.

I DON'T NEED ALL EIGHT BILLION OF US TO BUY MY BOOK.

Just seven billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine of you.

I already bought myself a copy.

So...

Yours in an increasingly desperate narrative perspective or philosophical stance that highlights hope, human resilience, moral growth, or a positive future...

Andy Robinson. Author, eternal optimist, and apparently the only person on Earth who fully understands the urgency of this situation.

Or

Andy Robinson. A writer without autism, dyslexia, ADHD, or even OCD, who has been recently diagnosed with FOMO.

P.S. Please share this post. I don't have the time to personally disappoint eight billion people.

P.P.S. If Jeff Bezos happens to be reading this, I believe we need to discuss your company's apparent failure to make 'our' new book highly visible and me, the author, spectacularly wealthy.

P.P.P.S. Gregory, I know you're still here. Buy the bloody book!!

#TheBooksALotBetterThanTheMovie #AndyRobinson #IndieAuthor #BookHumour #AmazonBooks #SupportIndependentAuthors #LiteraryMeltdown

[NEWS PROGRAMME INTRO MUSIC — suitably important and unnecessarily dramatic]

ANDY ROBINSON:

Good evening.

I interrupt your regularly scheduled internet scrolling to bring you a really important development from the world of literature.

A new book has been published!

Authorities are describing the situation as “fairly normal, actually,” although the author has asked us not to dwell on that for too long.

The book in question is The Book’s a Lot Better Than the Movie, a novel about Localad, a sixty-four-year-old bookseller who spends twenty years writing his masterpiece.

Which is admirable.

It is also an extremely inefficient use of twenty years.

I mean, the Sydney Opera House only took fourteen.

His novel, Purradise, is a sweeping fantasy involving cats, fallen knights, singing mountains, grief, courage, a brave warrior named Jasmine and a mysterious Wound in the sky.

Then Hollywood discovers it.

And this is where conditions deteriorate rapidly...

A producer loves the manuscript.

The studio buys the movie rights.

Localad goes to Hollywood. Just like Frankie did forty years earlier. 

And several highly paid people immediately begin 'improving' his story until almost none of the original storyline remains.

There are meetings.

There are notes.

There are rewrites.

There is market research.

There is an all-action hero star.

And somewhere along the way, the delicate emotional heart of Localad's twenty-year masterpiece is apparently beaten to death with a demographics report.

The resulting movie is released.

It is enormous.

It is expensive.

Things explode.

Critics use words such as a “spectacle”, which is frequently what critics say when they are trying very hard not to say “Oh dear.”

But then something rather unexpected happens.

People discover the original book.

And they like it.

Quite a lot, actually.

Which leads to an increasingly dangerous idea spreading fast across the internet:

The book’s a lot better than the movie.

[ANDY PAUSES. AND LOOKS TOWARD SCREEN.]

Which, rather conveniently, is also the book's title.

Marketing experts have described this as either “excellent branding” or “an author getting away with something.”

The novel is mildly funny, warm, occasionally ridiculous and just possibly has something to say about creativity, success, failure, Hollywood, books, the whole writing process and what happens when people with PowerPoint presentations are allowed anywhere near art.

[ANDY NOW LEANS SLIGHTLY TOWARD CAMERA.]

And, in a relatively disturbing development for journalism, I should now really fully disclose that I actually wrote it.

So truth be known, this entire news report has been nothing more than a shameless advertisement for my latest novel.

Of course, there will be an inquiry.

And I intend to cooperate fully.

And in the meantime, The Book’s a Lot Better Than the Movie is available now on Amazon.

Buy yourself a copy.

Read it.

And if Hollywood calls afterwards...

for heaven’s sake, don’t answer the phone.

[SERIOUS NEWSREADER NOD.]

I’m Andy Robinson.

Good reading and...

Good night.

[NEWS OUTRO MUSIC]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0645493953

IT'S SO MUCH MORE THAN A BOOK...

It's a deceptively rectangular shaped object containing several thousand carefully arranged words, created when a person voluntarily sacrifices their sleep, sanity, social interaction, and a perfectly serviceable amount of their remaining lifespan in order to manufacture imaginary people with imaginary problems, set in imaginary exotic backgrounds, before spending four further months correcting all the commas.

A book is communication, traditionally constructed from paper, ink, caffeine, self-doubt, existential dread and one inexplicably troublesome chapter of blood, sweat and tears. A book exists primarily to transport the reader into another world while its author remains behind, staring nervously at sales figures and wondering why nobody has left a review yet.

Books are instrumental. They have toppled governments, started religions, ended relationships, inspired revolutions, educated civilizations and provided humanity with something impressive-looking to put on shelves behind them during video calls for years now.

In its most advanced form, a book may also be adapted into a major motion picture, at which point approximately 63% of its plot is savagely removed, 22% is re-written, and somebody who never had one previously, is given a sword prior to a gender reassignment. Along with an explosion or two being added to Chapter Three for good measure.

And it's probably at this stage when the audience eventually mutters:

“THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE.”

Available Now at Amazon

The Dangerous Moment When Somebody Says, “We Can Make This Better”

There are few sentences more terrifying to a creative person than: “We love it.”

This sounds a little counterintuitive. You would imagine the frightening sentences would be things like: “We hate it.”, “We're passing.”, “We've decided to go in another direction.”

Or, if you're an author: “We've read the manuscript and would like to discuss page 147.”

Nobody wants to discuss page 147.

Page 147 already knows what it did.

But we love it is different. Because we love it is rarely allowed to travel alone. It usually brings a friend.

“We love it. We just think…”

And there it is. The beginning of improvement.

Improvement is a dangerous business

Before I begin, I have nothing against improving things. Human civilisation would be considerably less comfortable if nobody had ever looked at the first toilet and thought:

I believe there may be room for development here.

Improvement has given us antibiotics, refrigeration, air conditioning and coffee machines that can produce seventeen different varieties of coffee while requiring only a master's degree in engineering to operate.

But creative improvement is different. Because eventually somebody has to decide what better actually means.

Now for this bit, I want you to imagine you've spent twenty years writing a novel. Not twenty weekends. Twenty years.

You've lived with your novel’s characters for longer than some marriages last. You've removed paragraphs you loved because they didn't belong. You've rewritten chapters at two in the morning. You've changed a character's name seventeen times because somehow Bernard wasn't right.

And eventually you think you have something. Not something perfect. But something that’s undeniably yours.

Then someone arrives carrying a clipboard. “We love it.” They proclaim.

Wonderful.

“Absolutely love it.”

Even better.

“There's just one thing…”  <<<  Ah, there it is, WE LOVE ITs best friend.

And this is where Localad gets into trouble

In THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE, Localad has spent twenty years writing his novel Purradise. It is an enormous fantasy novel about a land ruled by cats, fallen knights, singing mountains, courage, grief and a mysterious Wound in the sky.

Nobody has read it and this bothers Localad enormously.

Then Hollywood reads it, which eventually bothers him considerably more.

Because Hollywood loves Purradise. They love the world it has created. They love the characters. They love the emotional depth and the originality. They love absolutely everything about it.

But WE LOVE ITs best friend, would prefer that most of those things were different. The quiet moments could perhaps be less quiet. The complicated characters could perhaps be less complicated. The grief could perhaps become vengeance instead.

The Wound could be bigger. There could be more action. There could be a franchise. There could be merchandise. And could somebody please explain why none of the cats has yet ridden away from an explosion without looking back?

Localad begins discovering something every creative person eventually learns:

Nobody ever destroys your work by openly announcing: “I intend to destroy it!”

They try to improve it.

Nobody means any harm

And this, I think, is the interesting part. It would have been very easy to write the people surrounding Localad as villains. Men in expensive suits sitting around a table saying: “How shall we ruin literature today?” Possibly while stroking a white cat.

Although in this particular story the cat would probably demand points on the backend. But that's not really how these things happen.

The producer wants a successful movie. The studio wants its investment protected. Marketing wants something it can market. The lead actor wants something he can act. The lawyers want everyone to stop talking immediately.

Everyone is just doing their job. And every individual decision made in the process can make perfectly good sense. But somehow, after enough perfectly sensible decisions, nobody can quite remember what the original thing was.

That's what fascinates me.

The death of originality doesn't necessarily require an executioner. Sometimes all it needs is a committee.

The graph has entered the room

At some point in almost every modern creative enterprise, somebody produces data. This is generally considered a serious moment because the data has a graph. And graphs are extremely persuasive.

You can say almost anything while pointing at a graph and people will hesitate before challenging you.

“Our research indicates that audiences respond positively to emotional authenticity.”

Graph.

“Viewers demonstrate stronger engagement with recognisable archetypes.”

Graph.

“Adults aged thirty-five to fifty-four are particularly receptive to emotionally damaged, 64- year-old writers.”

Graph.

Nobody knows exactly how the writer became emotionally damaged. There wasn't time because the meeting ends at four.

And this is where something created because one person desperately wanted to say something, encounters something designed to appeal to the greatest possible number of people.

Those two objectives aren't always enemies. But they aren't always friends either.

Creation is an absurdly personal act

Whether you write books, paint pictures, take photographs, make music, build furniture or construct tiny replicas of railway stations in your garage while insisting to your family that this is perfectly normal behaviour, you eventually put something of yourself into it.

That's unavoidable.

You make choices. This word instead of that one. This colour. This angle. This character lives. That one doesn't.

And sometimes you can't even explain why. You simply know.

Then eventually your product leaves you. A reader reads it. A viewer sees it. Someone listens to it.

And something rather wonderful happens.

They make it partly theirs.

That's the bargain.

The creator doesn't control what the audience feels. Nor should they.

But there's a difference between allowing someone to interpret your work and allowing someone to dismantle it looking for more commercially useful components.

That's the territory Localad stumbles into. He thinks he's selling Hollywood permission to make his story into a film.

Hollywood thinks it has purchased something rather more interesting: potential.

Potential sequels. Potential audiences. Potential merchandise. Potential markets. Potential intellectual property.

Localad, inconveniently, continues thinking of it as a story.

Which brings us now to ownership

Who owns a story?

Legally, that's often fairly straightforward.

Emotionally? Good luck.

A writer might sell film rights. A studio might buy adaptation rights. A publisher might own particular publishing rights.

Contracts can tell everybody precisely who is allowed to do what, in which territories, using which formats, until which dates and probably, under what circumstances someone is permitted to manufacture a commemorative lunchbox.

But none of that answers the more interesting question. Who owns what the story means?

That's harder.

And that's really what THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE became about for me.

Not Hollywood. Not filmmaking. Not even books... Ownership.

The peculiar human need to protect the things we create from becoming something we never intended. And the equally peculiar fact that once we release those things into the world, we cannot entirely control them anyway.

Localad eventually has to learn the difference. So does Hollywood. And neither enjoys the lesson particularly much.

And that's why independent creators do matter

There is something gloriously inefficient about independent creativity.

A person can spend years making something that market research would have killed on a Tuesday morning.

Nobody asked for it. No focus group approved it. There was no strategic gap in the market. Somebody simply thought:

This should exist.

And I love that.

Not: Our analysis indicates significant demand.

But: I've got an idea. And those may be the four most dangerous words in commerce.

They're also responsible for most of the things worth having.

Of course, there is still one tiny problem

Having written an entire novel satirising what happens when creativity collides with commerce, I am now attempting to commercially sell said novel.

Yes, I recognise the contradiction. And I have decided the healthiest response for this is to ignore it completely.

THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE is, after all, a product.

It has a price. It has an ISBN. It is available now from Amazon and here’s the link to prove it.

There are keywords. There are categories. And somewhere in the land of Bezos, an algorithm is currently deciding whether you are the sort of person who might properly enjoy it. So perhaps none of us escapes the machinery entirely.

But maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is simply remembering, underneath all the algorithms and markets and platforms and graphs, why the thing existed in the first place.

Someone had something they wanted to say and somebody else wanted to hear it. Easy as that.

Everything between those two people is just infrastructure. Useful infrastructure, certainly. But infrastructure nonetheless.

And if Hollywood ever does get around to telephoning me for my manuscript, of course I'll answer them. I'm an author not an idiot. I'll listen politely. I'll thank them for their interest. I'll remain calm and professional all the way through. And when they eventually say:

“We absolutely love the book. We just have a few changes…”

I'll know exactly what to say.

“That's wonderful, I just have a few clauses.”