Mailbag

Scott --

I recently discovered your blog, and noticed that along with Fun Joel and Josh F., all of you guys work/worked as readers.

I used to write coverage for my friends, who were assistants at various agencies, in exchange for all the free scripts I wanted. I figured I ended up writing 30-40 of them over 2002-2003, while I was in school, but they soon left their jobs and I forgot about it.

I never realized that you could actually get paid per script. I always figured it was all the assistants who were doing the coverage, as part of their job.

What does one have to do to get work as a reader? Do you have to work in an office? What is the average pay? How many scripts can I read per week? I've heard from friends that you can either be in-house, which is more of an office job, or a freelance reader... Is that true?

B.


All good questions.

Basically, reading work varies, depending on the company. Some make the assistants or the interns do it. Many have at least some paid readers, to get the better stuff covered (or anything covered better), or to take the workload off the people in their office.

I've never known any in-house readers with offices, though I suppose they exist. Otherwise, there are union readers (who work for the major studios, though the union is pretty much impossible to get into) and freelance readers like me, who work for smaller studios, TV networks or production companies.

I'm very fulltime, which means that on average I probably read 5 books and 8-10 scripts a week, for about 4-5 different companies (I used to work almost exclusively for Miramax/Dimension, but that stopped when they started going through their divorce). But there are readers who only read a few things a week; it depends how much time you want to devote to it, or how much the people you are readers for need you to read.

I read in my apartment, or out at a coffee shop; sometimes people messenger work to me, and sometimes I physically pick it up. All of the coverage (around two pages of synopsis, and a page of comments) I write on my computer, and e-mail in; only very rarely am I e-mailed scripts to read.

Many people that I work for, I have never even met.

If you have samples, that's good; if you live in L.A., that's important too. I'd suggest just calling production companies or agencies, tell them that you have some experience and are looking for part-time reader work, and see if anyone bites. Often people need readers, but it is hard to know where to look for them, so you might get lucky. They'll probably ask for a resume and samples; they'll probably even ask you to do a sample coverage of something they give you.

Scripts usually start about $50 each, though it can be a little more depending on the company. Books escalate by page length; generally it is about $100 up to 300 pages, and then jumps by anywhere from $20-$50 for each 100 pages after that. But everyone pays differently, and usually experienced readers get paid a little more.

Good luck, and let me know how it goes...