Early last year, the film rights to a book called The Passage were auctioned off before the book had even been finished.
The publishing rights to the ms had already been acquired by Ballantine. But has anyone heard recently of rights auctions for completed manuscripts that had not yet been acquired by publishers?
What you should understand is that very often a book may not be finished but may nevertheless have been written by an established writer whose last book generated some substantial interest -- may even have been sold to the movies, or made into a movie.
In that case, it wouldn't be at all surprising that a production company, knowing that a manuscript was close to completion, if given the opportunity to grab a look at it, might very well, just on the basis of that look, opt to make an offer on the film rights.
As for an "auction" -- the only way that that would happen would be if there was agent involved who submitted the incomplete manuscript to a number of different studios at the same time and said, in essence -- let's hear your offers.
But for that to work, it's extremely unlikely that this could have been an unknown (not to mention incomplete) quantity from an unknown writer.
It would have to have been -- we're giving you a chance to bid on X's next book before it's even finished, before it even goes out to publishers -- with the idea that the bidders are actually getting a good deal -- that what they'd be paying now might very well be better than what they might have to pay later when the book is published and becomes a best seller.
That's how you generate heat and interest in a project.
But you'd never be able to generate any interest in some unfinished, unsold manuscript that was just hanging around in your back drawer that way. You -- the writer -- have to have some heat to begin with to get the whole ball rolling.
NMS
