FOLLOWING UP

LegalDispatch 104

Jul 12, 2024

Howdy.

Well, I won’t say that I’m tired, but yesterday I flew from LA to New York for a wedding. My daughter Lily was generous enough to make my friends a cake but had to go to work at her internship today. So I got on my suit and die, cabbed down to her favorite cake supply store to buy a cake box, hauled ass to her apartment where I transferred the beautiful cake from the fridge into said box — a process no less stressful than disarming a bomb — and hauled ass to the venue in an Uber roomy enough that I could place the cake in its box on the floor for the 45-minute ride to the Bronx.

The bride was there, looking wonderful, but not in her dress and handling the floral arrangements, both despite the wedding being a half-hour away.

Except that it wasn’t.

The wedding’s tomorrow.

Sigh.

BEWARE A 25%-OFF DISCOUNT

Marvel’s friends at Barnes & Noble are running a 25% off on pre-orders made at bn.com before July 17. The program includes the forthcoming trade paperback collection of my Beware the Planet of the Apes run, which drops August 13.

Cover by Taurin Clarke (This was originally the cover for Issue 4 and I’m so pleased that the Marvel editors chose it for the cover of the trade as its my favorite of the series.)

You can access the savings by using the discount code PREORDER25 at check out.

Oh, and what kind of schnorrer would I be if I didn’t provide a direct link to the Beware POTA trade?

SPEAKING OF PRE-ORDERS…

No, I won’t bother you too much about In Any Lifetime this week, but I wanted to share some pretty remarkable news. Between the Amazon First Reads program and pre-orders, we’ve sold A LOT of books.

I mean, like, an eye-watering amount.

The Amazon page indicates that people have either read or pre-ordered more than 5,000 copies (!!!) in less than two weeks. But the truth is that the actual number is significantly higher. (I don’t mean to be cagey, but nor do I want to upset anyone at Amazon by going public with the actual figure without permission.)

Oh, and we also made a couple of fun lists:

All of which is to say… none of this would be possible without the incredible support of the subscribers to this newsletter. So many of you have reached out to say that you’ve either pre-ordered the book or checked it out on Amazon First Reads. Your encouragement and support of my little endeavor means more to me than you could know or that I could ever express.

Thank you.

(And if you haven’t pre-ordered, I would graciously appreciate your considering doing so. If you don’t enjoy the book, I’d be honored to refund your money.)

FOLLOW-UP

Earlier this week, someone reached out to ask the following question (which I’ve filed off the serial numbers on):

I've had some strong interest and solid meetings with producers, partners, etc. on a project I’ve been pitching around. As I don't have an agent, I was wondering: how do you babysit the process? I.E. follow-up with the companies/people who you've met with and discussed?
I'm a persistent bloke, but I don't want to over-do checking into the groups I've met with and shared material. That said, memories are short and this is summertime, so...

I thought this was a good enough question to share under the assumption that others might have a similar query. With the caveat that I don’t profess to possess any specific expertise or knowledge in this area, here’s what I wrote back:

First, I generally proceed from the assumption that silence means a pass at least 75% of the time. I don’t know how accurate that assessment is, but it’s one I’ve developed over my past 24 years in the business.

Assuming the assumption is correct, that means that 25% of the time, silence actually requires follow-up. I actually just encountered one of those 25% outlier situations a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the day, there are just some people who need a nudge.

The trick, obviously, is knowing who needs a nudge and who is silently passing and would prefer not to hear from you.

Psychic abilities would make the determination easier, I imagine, but in their absence, here’s the rubric I personally follow:

DO: Give people at least a month to respond. (I know that a month may sound/seem like a long time, but the entertainment business — including comics, I’ll note — moves at a glacial pace these days.)
DO: Be casual and polite when reaching out. (Yes, this sounds axiomatic, but I’m here to tell you that there are some people who need to be reminded that this is the case.)
DON’T: Begin your reach-out with “I know you’re busy…” (Admittedly, this is a pet peeve of mine, but if you start off acknowledging that someone is busy, it doesn’t come off as empathetic as probably intended. Rather, it implies a subtext which says “I know you’re busy but I evidently don’t care”.)
DO: Assume that whoever you’re reaching out to is even busier than you know.
DO: Try to make a good faith effort — being honest with yourself — to determine if the person you’re following up with was genuinely interested in whatever you’re following up on. Some people are just being polite and most of us can tell when that’s the case. If their perceived interest appears more polite than genuine, my advice is to just leave them be.
DON’T: Nudge unless it’s business-related. If you’re pitching or discussed an actual project — a piece of potential business — a respectful follow-up is more than reasonable. But if you’re just reaching out to see if someone has read your script or sample or whatnot, you can assume that if they haven’t reached out, they haven’t read/watched/whatever.
A corollary to this last point is to always be honest with the person in question (and yourself) about what’s really going on. For example, did you send the script to a showrunner because you truly want their feedback or did you do so in the secret hope that they’ll love it so much they’ll volunteer to attach themselves to your project? Asking for a friend…

I hope this is helpful!

LegalDispatch

FOLLOWING UP

LegalDispatch 104

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