Tathagata Das: Screenwriter and director in Mumbai, India.

My one hour pilot Murder-Go-Round just received a read request by De Laurentiis Films.

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My name is Tathagata Das (I use Tg as my pen name) I am a writer-director from India. If I can help on a project please let me know.

I recently met a man (I will call him Carlos) who told me, sadly, that he couldn’t sell the book he wrote. He was angry and gave me a pile of reasons why it was the case. He also looked at me in envy and disbelief hearing that I had a bunch of best sellers. He said I was lucky. I shook my head listening, with a sense of compassion. I want to offer you five keys in writing a Best selling book so you don’t become that poor guy who feels sorry for himself. First, you need to choose your side: Are you writing to sell or are you writing to keep your book to yourself? If you choose to write to sell, then you need to take care of these important elements: 1- Is the subject interesting to anyone but yourself? Carlos wrote the History of Africa in Spanish and was trying to sell it in Brasil… Does that sound coherent? He was passionate about his subject because he spent most of his life in Africa but could only write in Spanish. The problem is, that subject is absolutely not interesting to Portuguese speaking Brazilians…. Most authors want to write their autobiography and I am approached quasi daily by people who love for me to write their biography. But they get a ”no” in 99.99% of the cases. I write to sell books and stories. Most biographies won’t sell. It is great to start your career by writing your biography to get it out of the way and move on to the next. Unless you have had an out of this world experience (and really really really out of this world) worth reading and you know how to spin the story to make it thrilling and exiting, a biography won’t sell. 2- The marketing plan needs to be in place BEFORE you write your book. Carlos had the idea to sell a Spanish book about African history to Brazilians. I don’t think he had done much market research before proceeding. Here are some questions you have to ask: Who am I selling to: age, gender, complete personal profile, interests, problems I can solve with my book… Do I have a killer title? I spent 3 years as a book critic and I read more books than many people in a life time. Yet only a few really stuck in my mind. One of them called “How I ate my father?” from a Norwegian author. The title was so provocative that I couldn’t wait to read the story. Is my audience large enough? Who is my competition and how am I different? What is my Unique Selling Proposition (what makes me different from the rest) and what benefits do I offer (benefits not advantages – see my article on selling)? What is the market trend? Is this a subject that is on the rise or is the public interest moved on to something else? Will it last? What does my reader want? You write for him not you! How will I sell my book? You cannot rely on an agent or a publisher to sell your book as they will ask you to sell it with them. What is your plan? How will I increase my fan base of potential buyers? remember, buyers buy you before they buy from you. What image am I going to present? Your brand needs to be created before you start. How many followers do I have on social media? For example, a lady taking pictures of her dog had 400,000 followers on instagram. She got approached by a publishing company to write a book on dogs. She wasn’t an author, but she had the fan base to sell a book. 3- Why am I doing this? Did I just read about a book, a story or a movie that made it big and I think that if I do the same exact thing, I will also be successful even though I hate the entire process? If you answer even the sightliest “yes” to this, move away. If you want to sell your book, you need to be extremely passionate about it. You need to eat, sleep, breathe your book. A book is never the end. If it is a success, it is the beginning of a long series of promotional book tours, signing autographs, interviews… If you do not like what you are writing about, your life will become hell if you are successful and you will curse the day you started on this journey. Also, passion is contagious. The more passionate you feel about your project, the more you will attract interest. People love to hang around positive passionate people. It boosts our endorphine levels (the happiness hormone). 4- What else is there? You do not want to be a “one hit wonder”. Most publishers hate it and you need to be able to share what you will be working on after that and after that and… Also, you need to know what you can upsell your book with. Book sales rarely feed an author. You need to know what you will offer buyers of the book after. A movie? Consulting or speaking services…? You need to prepare for the after life of book publishing. 5- You need a truck load of confidence I believe persistence beats resistance because when you persevere, you outlive any resistance. But, in order to persevere, you need to be armed with a huge load of self confidence, and mega positive attitude. When I wrote my first book (a quasi autobiography

Hii

Hii thank you for the connect :)

Hi Tathagata. I'm RB, Founder and CEO of Stage 32. As a screenwriter, producer, actor and filmmaker, I know first-hand the challenges all creatives face finding work, landing representation, launching projects, securing funding and simply making the connections that will make a difference in their careers. That's why I created Stage 32. Since our launch in September of 2011, the community has grown to 1,000,000+ members representing every country on the planet making Stage 32 the social network uniquely populated with the most creative people on Earth.

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Hello Tathagata -

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