A Story to Topple Star Wars and Harry Potter! Yours for only $3 Million Bucks!
on February 27th, 2011Hey, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s up on ebay, and thanks to Jeremy Avery for the hat tip.
Alas, no bids so far.
I am selling my story that I have been creating for 10+ years. (not constantly writing, but of piecing everything together in a cohesive manner) It can be compared to stories like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Matrix, Indiana Jones and other titles in those categories. This is a really great story I have. This story needs to be completed by a professional writer or Ghost Writer. I am by no means a writer.
Oh, stop.
OK, maybe it’s mean of me to mockity mock this, because it is clearly off the hook. But once in awhile, a publisher comes forward to ask me why I don’t write a Very Bad Freelancer series to go along with my Very Bad Publisher series. There are scores of deluded, untalented, diva-like goofballs out there making life miserable for perfectly nice publishing companies.
Well, conflict of interest (yeah, that’s it,) ’cause I’d have to squeal on my fellow freelancers (and, perhaps, me,) so no.
But I can point you to this utterly daffy ebay auction with a $3,000,000 starting bid, and a buy it now price of $10,000,000. I took a screen shot in case this thing evaporates tomorrow.
I would rather not sell it at all and just find investors to help hire a celebrity Ghost Writer, which would cost 250,000. The company that hires these writers out, guarantee the book to be a New York best seller. From my understanding, a celebrity ghost writer is someone who has written many books for others that have become “best sellers” and are at a point in their writing career to produce these best sellers often.
If George Lucas offered to sell his idea of Star Wars, would you have bought it?
No.
I will share my story with someone in person only and not over the internet. My story is too valuable to be spread publicly and will give a lot of new ideas for movies and book series that should belong to the buyer.
I bet JK Rowling thinks her story is too valuable to be shared publicly! Clearly, she should never have let that publisher put it into print. Now the cat is out of the bag! I know who killed Dumbledore.
This story will bring in endless fame and money to anyone who takes it. I do not have money to hire a Ghost Writer and I do not want to die with this story untold.
Must…stop…laughing…
And for the people reading this post who think I’m crazy for asking this amount of money for it; this kind of money is a drop in the bucket for large corporations. If it sounds like too much money then you are not the kind of buyer I’m looking for.
Well, OK then.
I know a Hollywood A-list screenwriter or three who doesn’t get that kind of money for a proposal, or even a final screenplay. It’s too bad Spielberg is such a skinflint. Otherwise, he could afford you.
Oh, look, I didn’t notice before. He’s thrown in free shipping.
For a $3,000,000 CD, I sure as hell should hope so.
So you want to be a screenwriter.
So you want to write a novel.
ROLFCOPTER! XD ohmygod! OMG!!! I write fanfiction comissions, imagine if I dared to charge my clients 3mill dls for their ideas? XD Oh come on! this person is too funny! I bet is a joke, but still!
I don’t think he’s joking.
If he is…good on him. ‘Cause this is a scream.
I love these little movies. Amazing how such humor can get across completely deadpan like that.
I met a guy at an art festival once who became convinced I had some sort of “in” in the comic industry or something, or even that I knew what the heck I was doing with comics just ’cause I was there.
Gave him some of the advice I wished someone had given me when I started out. Spent hours reading his scripts and suggesting edits. Somehow in the midst of this I managed to crush his dream of ever publishing his comic and now I am the most horrible person alive. These make me wonder if I did him a favor….*sigh*
Well, I’m off to raise 3 million to bid on that superawesomecool story. George Lucas can suck it.
Why are you crushing their dreams? You are so bitter!
I swear, I wish I got paid for every person who claimed I told them never to draw or some similar nonsense.
I once told a guy he should stop drawing from comics (as in stop swiping, you little plagiarist,) and he told all his friends I was a big meanie. One of them came up to me at a convention to castigate me with colorful language for destroying his friend’s life.
And all he did was make me feel bloated with power. MWUAHAHAHA!
Needless to say, I’ve never told anyone not to follow their muse, but whatever.
If this human xerox wants to swipe, no skin off my nose. Hope he has a good lawyer.
“You’re just afraid of the competition. That’s what it is.”
That’s the closing line on my own version of “So you want to write a novel”. Also done on Xtranormal.
http://scribblersguidetomyth.com/blog/?p=85
But really. $3 million for an idea that he won’t even hint about (except that it will be bigger than all those other things)? I don’t think so. They don’t even pay that for actually completed manuscripts, and certainly not in the fantasy/science fiction genre!
I deal with enough aspiring writers who are actually serious about applying themselves to the work, and who still have a lot to learn. People who don’t even want to learn how to do the work…. There isn’t enough time in the world to deal with them.
Ha! Thanks Colleen, this one made my Silly Site o’ the Day, and in fact my day as well!
Obviously those A-List screenwriters need to fire their overpaid agents. On the other hand, I wonder what eBay’s Final Value fee would be on 3 million dollars or more?
wonder how long before 4chan starts bidding on it?
Wow. I must go and get my extra 3 million dollars! I am ever so happy I have squirrelled it away! I was just trolling for discounted Star Wars toys when this popped up! And best of all — FREE SHIPPING! I hate having to overpay on shipping for a 3 million dollar idea.
“You’re just afraid of the competition!”
Awesome.
Y’know, he could have started it really low. That would have made it a lovely joke, because people might have bid on it just for the laughs! Of course, then ebay might have required them to pay….
“If you win the auction; we would meet in person, you would sign a nondisclosure document so i can be protected if you back out, I would share the story. Then you would choose to keep the story or refuse it. If you refuse it you would get a 100% refund and I would be protected so that you can’t use my story after backing out.”
Um… that whole “you can’t copyright an idea” thing… is this enforceable?
If *I* had $3,000,000 to spend, I’d hire me someone to co-write the screenplay, keep the “Story by” credit, and make sure I’m a producer on the filming. Or I set up a pot mill and have other writers generate ideas for me. They get paid when the movie makes money. (JUST KIDDING!)
…Or perhaps hire someone to hack his ebay account, trace his location, and then hack the laptop. Or just steal it. Or write a screenplay about the whole thing… Internet noob thinks he has million-dollar-idea, bored college students decide to hack the noob, the laptop is the MacGuffin, just keep adding crazy characters (family members, friends, baristas..) And yes, the laptop is a Mac, but replace the apple logo with a falcon silhouette.
Or he could take a course in college to learn the basics (claiming the tuition on my income tax return), read various books on the subject from the library, and then experience the heartbreak of trying to find an agent and getting people to read it. But he’d probably be scared of people stealing what he wrote.
Or… go to Kickstarter. Find out what it costs to hire a screenwriter and a decent IP attorney. Ask people to donate.
(Of course, I could start a kickstarter fund to buy the script, so it could be publicly shared online and let everyone use it (and critique it). Instead of one version of his story, there could be hundreds! I think I could find three million internet users to participate.)
Wait… Fridge Logic… if the idea is so amazingly HUGE, why let it go for $3 Million?
http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2011/02/16/the-economics-of-star-wars-infographic/
Or… if the idea is so great, why not do some actual HARD WORK to get it produced?
“The next Tarrantino” or “the next Coen Brothers” are unnecessary. What these benighted tools don’t realize is that we don’t need another one of those. We’ve already got them. Those guys succeeded because they had something that was perceived as fresh. Copying them to be original is asinine.
OTOH, he IS offering free shipping….hmmm….
So after 10+ years, he hasn’t even completed the story? So all he has is some convoluted, highly derivative plot? You’d think he would have spent those years actually completing the thing so he wouldn’t have to be sharing his masterpiece with others. There is no such thing as the “greatest unfinished screenplay”.
This nut should be contacting James Frey, since this is something Frey could exploit, I mean bring forth to the publishing world.
This is too funny. What he’s really saying is, “I want to skip all the hard work, the cramped digits, the hundreds of hours of research, rewrites, blood, sweat, etc. and have my big payday up front and take no risk whatsoever!”
There really are no shortcuts. This is exactly what comes of telling kids that they can accomplish anything, ANYTHING, if they just believe it hard enough.
Kid needs a reality enema.
Considering how this is the real world, there’s a real possibility that someone will buy this – and for the asking price to boot. Morons have a way of finding eachothers.
Hey, Jeremy! I haven’t completed a story I started when I was twelve! Of course, that was a hundred years ago, and then it was sort of a Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica/Dragons story. By now it doesn’t bear any resemblance from its generations except that it’s sci-fi. Someday I’ll get it out of my head, onto a sharable format and, armed with the Writer’s Legal Guide (or probably a more recent version) which I bought through a link here because it’s good to do whatever little you can, start trying to figure out how to get it published!
Hey, we all can dream.
farbeitfromme: that doesn’t sound too different than what I did with A Distant Soil, actually. LOL!
It’s a little sad how oblivious this guy is.
Even if his idea is super original, (which I doubt) it wouldn’t be worth it. Similarly, it could be crap and turned into something valuable.
It’s not the story itself, its how its told that makes all the difference.
If that super powered ghost writer he imagines existed (mind you, best sellers could make far more then the charge, especially considering any sort of company cut, so if someone was such an incredible author that everything they touched was a best seller, why wouldn’t they just write for themselves?) they would be far more valuable then his idea.
Also, if they spent ten years trying to develop a story and still have nothing really concrete, that’s a bit sad.
Actually, this whole thing is a little sad. If your idea is that awesome, keep trying to write it out. Sure, you’ll produce crap; that’s what revisions for.
But you could eventually produce something far greater then ‘an idea.’
The auction is over: “This listing was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available.”
Riiiight…
Gosh darn it! I checked in this morning to see how many views it had gotten.
Something tells me he did not get his millions of bucks. Poor fellow.
he did, however, get a million yuks
I would not be surprised if our mockity-mockery upset his little apple-cart.
It’s not that I really enjoy puncturing the balloons of clueless aspiring storytellers. But my patience is short with those who think their ideas are golden, yet do not want to do the work themselves. I tell those trying to break into Hollywood, that you can be a very good writer, and still have to work very, very hard to get over the threshold. Your spec scripts (which get you in the rooms where you might get jobs) have to be more than gold, they have to be diamond.
And putting your idea up for sale on eBay is NOT the way to get there.
(Pardon me, now. I’ll take my grumbling elsewhere – like back to work on my … heh, spec script.)
I suppose I should feel bad for crushing his dreams.
Nah.
Assigned reading for today:
“Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” by Harlan Ellison.
Ah darn! no longer available? Sold out? I was wondering if I could buy two, in blue. (yeaaah right)
Hi Colleen
thanks again for posting my “So You Want to Write a Novel” video, and thanks to all your readers who enjoyed it. A big thrill for me!