Smart Girls no longer provides printed letters, as email is a free, efficient, and effective way to communicate. It also makes it easy to follow up and track responses, ensuring your outreach is seamless and professional.

Getting representation is often a challenging topic for writers. The truth is, having good representation—someone with clout who genuinely believes in you and your projects—is ideal. However, as a new writer without feature film credits or substantial TV series credits, it can be difficult to catch the attention of agents or managers. That’s why we’ve found it’s often more effective to connect with producers at the right level first.

No, we do not send the emails out for you as part of our standard service. Instead, we provide you with a spreadsheet and PDF containing the email addresses of production companies, so you can email them directly on your own. However, we do offer an optional add-on service where we can handle the First Contact for you for an additional $200. Many writers find this helpful because it takes care of the initial outreach quickly, allowing you to focus solely on follow-ups.

It’s very rare to sell a screenplay outright. Instead, if you’re fortunate enough to land a deal, it’s more likely to be an option, typically earning you about 10% of the sale price. The sale price itself can vary widely, depending on factors like the script’s potential and the buyer. For example, an outright sale might range from $40,000—what New Line Cinema used to pay—to $125,000 or even $250,000 for a high-potential “spec” screenplay from a new writer.

Hollywood executives are accountable for the movies they greenlight, which is why many play it safe. Instead of taking risks, they justify failures by blaming sequels, stars, or directors. While a few aim to create meaningful, profitable films, most focus on making money—Hollywood’s ultimate bottom line—and the odds of doing so.

If it’s not in your budget, don’t do it. But marketing is a crucial step—why spend all that time writing if you’re not going to try to get it out there? If you have the money, then you have to ask yourself why you wouldn’t invest a few hundred dollars to give your script a chance when you're asking a producer to invest tens of millions to make it.

We strive to keep our database as accurate as possible with ongoing updates and meticulous research. For each of the 60 companies you pay for, we focus on selecting the best person at the company with an email available. Whenever possible, we aim to provide multiple email options for each contact, such as a direct individual email, a company email, or even a wildcard third option. While we can’t guarantee every person will have an individual email, we go above and beyond to maximize your chances of reaching the right people. Plus, we include a few bonus companies to account for any emails that may change or go bad over time before we have a chance to update it.

The entertainment industry is competitive, but silence doesn’t mean your script isn’t valuable—it’s often about timing or the company’s activities in that moment. Following up 7–10 days later with a polite reminder can make all the difference. Our follow-up email templates, included in the Query Letter Package or Script Marketing Campaign, guide you through the  follow-up process. They’re also available for purchase separately.

If we’re writing a query letter for your project, we’ll deliver the letter within one week after you complete the script information form. Once the query letter is finalized, we’ll prepare your list, which may take an additional week depending on the status of that Genre List. If you’re purchasing the Genre Producer List on its own, delivery depends on whether the list for that genre has been updated for the current quarter. If it’s ready, you’ll receive it within 24 hours; otherwise, it may take up to 7 days.