By Thomas Fletcher
Cinema as an artform has grown exponentially since its Silent Age Hollywood inception, and in today’s capitalist environment every limb has been dissected, drained and priced on the open market. Soundtracks are streamed online, art books are printed for dedicated fanbases, and behind-the-scenes documentaries are shot, edited and sold for profit. Every facet of the movie-making process has been commodified, with one notable exception.
Despite being some of the most read, lauded and critically analysed forms of writing, screenplays are still almost completely impossible to find for sale in bookstores.
So why aren’t screenplays sold in traditional bookstores?
Simple answer: many already are. Most of the time, however, they just don’t look like screenplays.
The film adaptation of The Godfather has been studied for over 50 years, and for good reason. Many prospective screenwriters look to it as a golden example of both cinematic and screenwriting practices. First-time screenwriter Mario Puzo is often credited in screenwriting courses as providing the blueprint for how to adapt a novel into an effective script. However, it isn’t his screenplay that can be easily found on shelves but his original 1969 novel. Finding a book in a bookstore is to be expected, but most published screenplays often look identical to their neighbours on the shelf.
There really isn’t any specific rule that makes the publishing of screenplays difficult. However this doesn’t mean screenplays face zero legal barriers in being published, something that isn’t immediately obvious to ordinary readers. These barriers to access lie in the legal details of the rights trade. For filmmakers, screenplays aren’t books, but key components of the movies that they are eventually made into.
Additionally, how could you find a screenplay in a bookstore when many were never published to begin with? Attempting to find a professionally published, Disney-branded screenplay, for example, is an impossible task for any animation fan, simply because these products do not exist.
Cinema and the rights of the author
A film adaption begins with a studio or a director buying the rights to a novel. Once the adaptation rights are purchased, these groups hold almost complete control over the movie, trading their excess material wealth for complete creative control. A small section of text in the contract can become the last tenuous link that an author has to the way their writing is presented on screen.
This is not limited to adaptations; most screenplays, once picked up by a production company, become that organisation’s intellectual property, something recognised in copyright law in Australia and overseas.
Even the act of selling your screenplay does not necessarily guarantee that a movie will be made. In the movie business, sometimes it’s better to restrict your opponent’s holdings than diversify your own offerings and risk financial mishap. While numerous productions have failed for honest reasons, many films will never see the light of day due to good old-fashioned greed.
Surprise, it’s capitalism again!
David Zaslav, CEO of the soon-to-be-split Warner Bros. Discovery, has garnered a bad reputation for his frequent surprise cancellation of films. While the failure and negative reception of certain projects can risk future financial backing, the scrapping of completed films like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme has been publicly ridiculed as hollow tax-saving measures. Heavy-handed studio interventions such as this show that creative projects like screenplays might frequently be held back by executives and corporations despite the public’s interest in seeing them
This is nothing new. The Disney Vault was a well-known system that operated for decades, shelving physical releases of some of their most popular movies, making them virtually impossible to purchase. This business model continued up until the advent of their streaming service Disney+ in 2019.
The boring reason why screenplays are not commercially available to the public is because they are viewed as financially risky to publish and so the rights to publish them in book form are rarely acquired by publishers. It isn’t much more complicated than that.
Buying and selling screenplays
For the past few years, I have desperately tried to get my dad a printed screenplay for his birthday, only to grow frustrated and give up every time. As a screenwriting student I could only watch those frustrations grow. Flipping through a physical book just feels right; having no real avenues to find an officially published screenplay steals some of the magic from studying the artform.
This desire unites both film enthusiasts and aspiring screenwriters, leading us to find other methods of acquisition. Search for any popular film online and you will most likely find a digital screenplay available on the first page of Google hits. Copyright law does not seem to affect the rate at which these appear online: even the latest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Sean Baker’s Anora (2024), has multiple download links. The same goes for Peter Straughan’s Conclave (2024), the recipient of this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay award.
This holds true for most screenplays, even those released in different markets or for less popular projects. This helps explain why attempting to purchase a screenplay as a consumer can be so difficult: they are already widely available for free. However, this shows that there is interest in reading and owning screenplays as pieces of literature. If cinema can be taken apart and appreciated for its individual contributions, the same stands true for the writing behind it.
Things aren’t hopeless (I promise!)
Despite how things seem, more screenplays are commercially available now than ever before. Distribution company A24 print a variety of their most popular releases in glorious hardcover. The success of these books lies in their status as collectors’ pieces; each edition includes essays, behind-the-scenes photography and an introduction by a notable person in the industry. But this is a rare case in screenplay publishing. Many films, including many produced by A24, have not yet been printed for the world to see.
Large production companies, whether presiding over cinema or literature, hold an immense amount of control over these pieces of writing. If more screenplays are going to be published and sold in local bookstores, change needs to start from the ground up. When markets are almost free of competition, small publishers can flourish. Authors and filmmakers alike have the same goal: to reach as wide an audience as possible.
The more these two areas of film production and publishing interact, the more plausible it will become that a screenplay section will arrive in your local bookstore, filling this distinct gap in the market.
As a commissioning editor at GSP, Thomas is known for his uplifting energy, approachable nature, and passion for conversation—particularly when dinosaurs are involved.
Cover image: Ron Lach on Pexels. Free to use under Creative Commons.
Leave a Reply