Screenwriter John August has written eight feature films, including “Go,” “Big Fish” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” At the moment, he’s writing the screenplay for “Creature,” based on the graphic novel, for Sam Mendes. But his latest project is a short story called “The Variant,” a mini-thriller about a mysterious library cataloguer whose secret life is revealed when a woman falls through his bathroom ceiling. August decided to sell the story directly to readers by posting it on Amazon as a Kindle edition, with sample pages available on his blog. In lieu of an editor, August recruited 20 of his Twitter followers to give him feedback on the story before he published. August talked to Mondo Media about what he’s learned from this experiment.
So essentially, you got your Twitter followers to help you polish up "The Variant," instead of having a professional editor?
I think a great editor is a huge help to anything you write -- though lacking that, a bunch of disinterested eyes was a great second choice. I make movies for a living, so I recognize how important it is to have an editor who is giving your movie shape. But I also recognize how important it is to put your movie in front of an audience to see how it responds.
What’s the benefit of using Twitter followers, as opposed to any other 20 random people you could get?
At 7:43 on a Tuesday night I would tweet to ask for eight people to read it, and within a minute I would have eight people tweeting their 'yes,' and I would direct a message to them with their link to the file. I’ve run a blog for five years, and I love the interaction with my readers, but it’s so delayed on a blog. The immediacy of Twitter makes different kinds of collaboration possible.
I signed on to Twitter first when I was at Sundance with "The Nines," and at that point I was literally just tweeting where I was so people could find me. And it was fascinating to see how it’s grown. Now I definitely see my Twitter feed as being my public persona -- Facebook is people I actually know in real life.
How long have you been reading on Kindle?
I love my Kindle, and I would prefer to read any book on a Kindle now -- probably after the third book I read on Kindle, it felt just really natural, and you love the freedom of having your book with you wherever you are …. I read a lot on my iPhone. Honestly part of my motivation for putting the story on the Kindle was seeing how easy it would be for anybody to get through it on their iPhone. The challenge was that it was only going to be available in the US. So I had to let people in say Micronesia have the pdf version too.
Which has sold more?
I’ve sold three times as many Kindle version as pdfs.
