The winners of the Golden Globes were announced last month. The BAFTAs are coming this month and the Oscars in March. It’s that time of year again; the time when film and TV titles dominate the entertainment news. When actors and writers get to give their effusive acceptance speeches.

One leading contender for the upcoming awards is the film Hamnet. Like many, many other film and TV properties, it’s based on a published book. Which means that someone, somewhere, decided to option Maggie O’Farrell’s story for the cinema. Then someone agreed to green-light the production – and the rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, Maggie O’Farrell is traditionally published – so there are plenty of people actively engaged in bringing her book to the attention of the good folk in film production.

What if you’re not traditionally published? As a self-published writer of historical fiction, I would love to have any of my books go through the same process. Or at least, have them optioned – the first step in their journey to the screen. When they’re optioned you have someone possibly interested in adapting them for the screen, and is willing to put some money up to secure the deal.

But how do you go about getting a book optioned? Before you ask – am I coming from a position of having secured a successful option deal? No, I’m coming from the position of having researched the subject, big time. As part of my research, I have been trying various avenues (I’m a ‘try-it-out-and-see-what-works’ kinda research guy). And, despite all my efforts, I don’t (yet) have an option on any of my [highly cinematic, female-led historical action-adventure] books. (Just sayin’).

In case you’re interested, I’m going to share some of my findings.

The first thing I discovered was that I had no way in to the world of film and TV production. I needed someone on the inside; someone who knew the way Hollywood works. A person who knew people. A sort of ‘agent’, if you will. I found an established scriptwriter who offered to represent one of my books in Hollywood, and push it to the studios. He wrote a ‘treatment’ – a pitch document setting out the premise of the plot and characters – and presented this to a number of studios. And would you believe, one of the biggest streamers (no, not that one) expressed an interest! He met with them, and apparently they were ‘very excited’ by the project…

Then Hollywood went on strike. And the project – however likely it had been to move forward – died. Would it have been optioned if the strike hadn’t happened? Possibly. I’ll never know for sure.

My next approach was to write my own treatment (for another book). I spent days crafting it, and in my humble opinion, it’s rather good. I researched agents who specialise in book-to-film representation, and approached them. Amazingly, none got back to me. Who’d have thought?

Next, I asked an LA lawyer for advice. The response was that agents don’t tend to respond to a treatment (as I had discovered). Instead, I needed to get my work directly in front of producers and showrunners (effectively the ‘producer’ of a TV series). I was directed to a website called Rightscenter; a sort-of marketplace platform bringing together books with the producers / showrunners who are looking for new content. I uploaded all my titles, put in the genre keywords and stood back, waiting for the offers to flood in…

And, of course, none did.

I decided that the problem is one of awareness. I need to bring my titles to the attention of the industry, to avoid them sinking to the silty bottom of the Rightscenter pool. So roll on my hashtag-heavy social campaign targeting the producers and showrunners, due to go live after the Oscars. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

It may work. It may not – but at least I’ll have tried. If none of my books ever receive the cinematic or TV development that they [so clearly] deserve – then I’ll rest easy in the knowledge that I gave it my best shot. (Maybe there’ a book in that? Plucky author tries to get a film deal… it could even be made into one of those ‘against the odds’ British films… anyone interested?)

If you’re also a self-published author and decide to follow my meandering path to (potential) success, I wish you all the luck. Because my final conclusion is this – it’s all a matter of… luck.

But, as with so much in life, it takes a lot of hard work to get lucky. I’ll keep trying, and who knows? In a few years I could be writing my own Oscar acceptance speech…

Firstly I’d like to thank my parents, without whom I would not be here. I would also like to thank the great team at ChatGPT for the amazing image of me in this post. Like any production it’s a joint effort and I simply couldn’t have done it without them.