John August

JOHN AUGUST ON LAUNCHING YOUR VISION

John August is a prolific media maker. He’s written screenplays ranging from Charlie’s Angels to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in addition to developing apps, creating a screenwriting software program, and commissioning the creation of a new font. For the last seven years, August and his fellow screenwriter Craig Mazin have shared their experiences and expertise in their highly successful podcast, Scriptnotes.

But when August began writing his first middle-grade novel, Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire, he struggled, vacillating between the highs and lows that come with publishing a debut book. Rather than retreat into himself, he decided to do what he does best: create something. He partnered with the podcast network Wondery to produce a new show called Launch. A compilation of interviews, phone calls, and email exchanges, Launch documented every step of August’s publishing journey, from his initial idea for the book to his cross-country publicity tour.

August’s transparency in dealing with editors, fielding offers to purchase film rights before the release of the book, and resisting the urge to obsess over early sales numbers provides a window into the realities of the contemporary publishing process. He also generously shares intimate details of the emotional toll it can take on the artist, discussing everything from his struggles with impostor syndrome to his feelings about his perceived position of privilege as a first-time author building off of a highly successful film career.

Shannon Eagen spoke to John August on behalf of PubLab about his views on the publishing world, the relationship between film and literature, and his insatiable appetite for curiosity. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Shannon Eagen:

We’ve heard a lot about how publishing is the dominant industry in New York, and film is the dominant industry in Los Angeles. I’m wondering how it felt to go from being a pretty major success in L.A.’s dominant industry, to being a novice in this “second-tier” industry?

John August:

There was never a sense of a publishing industry in L.A. at all. I’m sure there really is, I’m sure there’s more than I’m aware of, but as I talked with folks for the podcast, it became really clear that things were centered on the East Coast, particularly New York. I find it kind of surprising because there’s no great reason why publishing would need to be centered around New York. It feels like so much of the job could be run out of anywhere, and yet it is still centered in New York.

SE:

You make it very clear in the podcast that you didn’t want to jump into the film deal before the book was released. Would you extend that advice to other authors?

JA:

I wouldn’t put that out there as blanket advice. My case was a little bit special in the sense that I would probably be the screenwriter adapting it, so time- and work-wise, it wasn’t going to play out well. Also, because it was a three book series, I knew I had to give myself the space to make the books really work and not be thinking, “Oh, what are we doing for the first film?” For most authors, and my agent and publisher would agree, if someone wants to buy your book, you let them buy your book. It helps gain traction with retailers. That way, the publisher can say to retailers, “Film rights are sold, there’s momentum, there’s enthusiasm, there’s excitement.” It helps with the agent selling the book rights overseas, because they can say, “There’s a movie in development. This could be a big thing.”

SE:

Outside of your own book, how do you feel about some of these massive rights deals like Killers of the Flower Moon being sold for $5 million a year before it was even released?

JA:

I’m happy for the authors that are getting big payments. I can be fully happy for the novelists that are making these big deals, because I understand how challenging it can be to build a creative project that people are excited about. It’s great. As a screenwriter, it can be a little bit frustrating because ultimately that book will be adapted into a script, but if that script had been written by itself, it wouldn’t have sold for $5 million. It probably wouldn’t have sold at all. I get a little bit frustrated by the — I don’t want to say overvaluation — but the too-close focus on the book being the valuable thing people need to go after. Ultimately, what you’re making is a movie, and you’re not making a book. To play devil’s advocate, they’re thinking, “Not only is this a really great story, it could be a really great movie,” but they’re also thinking, “This book will probably be a hit,” and there will be a pre-sold audience to some degree.

SE:

In one of the early episodes of Launch you cited the fact that, “For once every word would be the one I wanted,” as a difference between writing a novel and a screenplay. I’m wondering if you found that this actually held true?

JA:

I would say that generally held true. As I went through the editorial process, first the editor reads and then she gives her notes back just as a document, and then I make the changes that I’ve agreed to make after some conversation. [In the proofreading stage] they actually do change stuff in the document, but I can see what the changes are and I can step them back to what they would originally have been. So in my experience, really every word that’s there was the word I wanted, even if it wasn’t the word I originally intended. There definitely were cases where they swapped out some words and they were better choices than what I had made.

SE:

Was it more difficult to swallow editorial word choices in this writing process than working on a screenplay, where you know an actor or director might change those words down the line?

JA:

I guess it was a little more difficult. Whenever you’re writing a screenplay you have a sense that, I can write the scene one way and I know that it will never be quite exactly what I had in my head. So when there are changes made on the set, or when an actor says a line differently, I’ve just come to expect that. A good analogy would be, if I turned in a script and the producer decided to rewrite some of the script before it went off to the director or the actors, I would throw a fit because that’s misrepresenting my work. Whereas I feel like the final film obviously isn’t just my work; it’s a lot of other people’s work too. But when it was really my text and people are seeing the actual words that I wrote, [those changes] become frustrating to me.

SE:

You talked about struggling with impostor syndrome early in your screenwriting career, and how that came back up in writing the novel. How did you feel writing your second novel?

JA:

The second novel is turned in, and I’ll say the impostor syndrome largely went away. I said, “I know how to do this,” but in a weird way, I wasn’t an expert at it and I wasn’t a novice, and in some ways that made it more difficult because I didn’t have the naive enthusiasm of a first timer, nor did I have the “been there, done that” chops of a pro. So the second book was challenging on a writing level partly because of that shift in who I was, and partly because I made some really difficult choices for myself in the second book. I’m really, really happy with the second book, but it’s structurally a lot more complicated than the first book.

SE:

Launch provided a crash course in the publishing industry. Do you have an idea of another industry that you would like to see demystified in a similar way?

JA:

Part of the instinct behind Launch was when I went off and did my first Broadway musical, Big Fish. Everything was brand new. I really wished I had documented what that was like; [to go from] the very basics all the way through the launch of that show was such a journey. I don’t have another equivalent thing, but when I pitched Launch, part of my sales pitch was that a future season could be about a completely different topic — not a book. A video game launch, or a company, or a literal launch of a small rocket. That sense of going from the basics, from “What even is this?” to getting it out in the world. There’s a commonality of experience no matter what [it] is.

SE:

Any other words of wisdom for us?

JA:

One of the underlying things that’s true in any sort of creative project you go after is that you always have a vision of what the finished thing is going to be. With Arlo Finch and with the movies I’ve done and the Broadway show, I always had a pretty clear vision of what that final thing was even if I didn’t quite know how to get there. So often, I see people go from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, and they forget the grander vision of what they’re trying to do. I didn’t start writing this book with the sense of, “I’m going to be a published author.” I started with the vision of, “This is the book I see existing.” It’s a subtle distinction of what your goals are longer-term, and what your goals are when you sit down every day to work.

SHANNON EAGEN

Shannon Eagen is an actress, writer and aspiring publisher living in Los Angeles. She is a proud graduate of the University of Michigan with a BFA in Theatre and a BA in Communications. She was featured in the Tony-nominated Broadway play Airline Highway, and was most recently seen in Guess Whom? in the Hollywood Fringe Festival. She is an avid bookworm, who always reads the book before seeing the movie.