More Flops?

I got this email from Antonio Lopez today:

I am a huge fan of your books on Unsold TV Pilots. I have found it so fascinating that when I finished Vol. 2, I was left wanting more. When do you plan on releasing another volume that brings us up to date to today’s unaired pilots. This seems like a project that could be updated every five years. Please let me know if you plan on bringing us future volumes.

People ask me this a lot. I started writing the original UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS book when I was nine years old and finished it in 1989, when I was in my 20s. I sold it to McFarland & Co, a small publisher in North Carolina, which brought the book out as an expensive, library-edition hard-cover. The book got lots of publicity and stayed in print for over a decade. When it finally fell out of print, I brought it out again (at no cost to myself) as a two-volume paperback  edition through the Authors Guild’s Back-in-Print program with iUniverse. I also produced two hour-long, primetime specials based on the book — one for ABC and one for CBS.

Over the years I’ve continued to casually gather data on unsold pilots for a future volume or TV special, but I doubt either will happen. I don’t have the time to write another book and there isn’t enough money in it for me to make it worthwhile. Besides, the world has changed since 1989 and the data on unsold pilots is now readily available to TV professionals through paid, on-line databases, which renders the need for my book obsolete. The "clip show" special has become extinct on primetime for the time being due to the success of reality shows and the skyrocketing costs of licensing TV and movie clips.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying no, Antonio, I don’t think I’ll be writing another volume of UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS any time soon…but I hope that someday I’ll have a chance to do another TV special. Thanks for your interest, though.

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