The Black List, a platform for unproduced screenplays, expands into fiction books

Franklin Leonard’s the Black List, a platform that highlights the best unproduced scripts for film, television and theater, is expanding into the world of fiction.

Established in 2005 as an annual list of the most-liked screenplays that hadn’t found homes, the Black List has since expanded from its humble beginnings into a Hollywood institution with more than 7,000 registered industry members. More than 400 scripts from its annual survey have been produced, including best picture Oscar winners “Spotlight,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The King’s Speech.”

Now the Los Angeles-based operation will allow authors of fiction books to create free profiles on its site to promote their work, the company said Wednesday morning. Authors also can pay $30 a month to host their manuscripts on the site for others to discover and $150 for a professional evaluation of an excerpt.

Adding fiction to the Black List’s purview enables the site to address the growing overlap among the film, television, theater and publishing industries, Leonard, the firm’s founder and chief executive, said in an interview.

“The challenges that existed in the book world were similar to the challenges that existed in the film and television world vis-a-vis finding great material wherever that great material existed,” he said. “I know there are great novels out there that people who can do something with them don’t know about. I’m very confident we will find them, and that we’ll all benefit from them as audience members and readers.”

All genres of fiction are encouraged on the site, Leonard said. Randy Winston, former director of writing programs at the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based
Center for Fiction, who will serve as the Black List’s creative director of fiction, said he is excited about “romantasy” submissions, a popular genre that combines romance and fantasy elements.

As part of the expansion, the Black List will host a new unpublished novel award, which will be judged next year by industry professionals such as LeVar Burton, Roxane Gay and Radhika Jones. The company also established a partnership with filmmaker Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films production firm to find an unpublished manuscript that will get an 18-month option for $25,000.

Additionally, the site will host a free online educational podcast series called “Read the Acknowledgments” for writers to learn more about the book publishing industry, something that was especially important to Winston.

The series is intended to help writers who may not have access to a community of professionals or could not find the information they need.

“They may need to get one piece of nuanced information and detail that will help them send it out,” Winston said.

The move comes as the market for adult fiction has expanded in recent years. Though annual print volume for the U.S. book market was down 3% last year compared with 2022, print sales of adult fiction grew 1%, marking the fifth year of growth for this segment, according to consumer trend analytics firm Circana. It attributed the growth to pandemic-induced reading trends.