The book is a complete how to guide from concept to contract in creating, marketing, protecting, and selling an idea from an author with more than 11 patents all of which have been licensed or sold. How To Sell Your Idea is written by an experienced entrepreneur and inventor who developed his skills in 35 years of selling ideas, products, and sales building tools to major Fortune 500 companies. The author is a frequent lecturer at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, University of Reno in Reno, Nevada, and numerous workshops and consulting training seminars. The text is easy to read and straight forward with hard-headed advice to save time, money, and emotional trauma by helping readers to avoid the many mistakes people make with ideas that they want to develop.
Don't let your creative ideas get picked apart and put down! If you're like most creative people, chances are high that you've had your share of ideas rejected by clients or decision makers. While we sometimes make the mistake of believing ideas should sell themselves, the fact is that the better and bolder the idea, the more it needs selling. This book contains powerful techniques to help you sell your ideas to those with approval power. You'll find tips from designers, writers, marketers and other creative professionals, along with meaty advice from selling and branding gurus. In no time, you'll be able to convince those who hold the purse strings that your ideas are worth pursuing and investing in. "Designers have a little known secret: Designing something is the easy part, getting others, specifically clients, to embrace that design is the real hard part. Harrison has put together dozens of tips that, if applied correctly, independently or in unison, will help you get those great design ideas approved." —Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio, authors of Graphic Design, Referenced
Create the Digital Games You Love to Play Discover an exercise-driven, non-technical approach to game design without the need for programming or artistic expertise using Game Design Workshop, Third Edition. Author Tracy Fullerton demystifies the creative process with a clear and accessible analysis of the formal and dramatic systems of game design. Examples of popular games, illustrations of design techniques, and refined exercises strengthen your understanding of how game systems function and give you the skills and tools necessary to create a compelling and engaging game. The book puts you to work prototyping, playtesting, and revising your own games with time-tested methods and tools. It provides you with the foundation to advance your career in any facet of the game industry, including design, producing, programming, and visual design.
How to find develop, pitch, and sell your ideas for films to the movie studios, from the man Sherry Lansing calls the best idea man in Hollywood. How to Sell Your Idea to Hollywood gets to the very heart of the script: the idea. A mere idea can land you fame, fortune and status. At the very least, it can be your way into the movie business. This book can show you just how powerful an idea can be in Hollywood. Ideas are not a dime a dozengreat ideas are one in a million. Even if you cannot write a script, you can definitely come up with an idea. Once you have an idea, you can use that idea as leverage to get yourself into the movie game. If your main goal is to be a screenwriter, you still need to start with a good idea, which can help you make a deal to write your script for a studio (or you might choose to just sell your idea or your story). Successful producer Robert Kosberg has never met anyone who didnt have an idea. And this book will help you to learn how to find ideas, create ideas and pitch them to the right people. Youll also learn what a high concept idea is and most importantly, how to get your ideas to the right people. Rememberyou control the rights to your own ideas and thats why ideas are so powerful. How to Sell Your Idea to Hollywood encourages people at all levels who are attempting to get their break in the business. It has everything you need to know to sell your ideas to the movies. If you never thought you had something to offer the movie businessyou do!
Turn your great idea into millions—without lifting a finger! Yes, a good idea is enough to build a fortune! Too many people think production, marketing, and distribution are essential to the entrepreneurial process. As One Simple Idea shows, you can hand these tasks off to others—and make big money in doing so. Stephen Key, a highly successful entrepreneur whose creations have generated billions of revenue, offers the simple, effortless secret to success: license your simple idea and let others do the work. Breaking down the process of generating and licensing a product idea to a large company, he explains why you don’t need to reinvent the wheel: Simple improvements to existing products can be very successful endeavors—and the most lucrative. The old method of bringing products to market through prototyping and patents doesn’t work anymore. It’s cheaper and more profitable to do it Key’s way. One Simple Idea gives you everything you need to tap into the marketing and sales power of partners and licensors for maximum profit.
What’s YOUR story? In the hypercompetitive world of Silicon Valley, this question has replaced “What’s your pitch?” It’s another way of asking, “Who are you?” The art of the pitch is nothing short of a survival skill. If an entrepreneur can’t convince an investor in 10 minutes that a business idea has potential, that is often the end of it. If a project manager in a large enterprise can’t win support from other stakeholders, his or her project is at risk. You always need to be selling yourself, pitching your partners or your clients to work with you, or pitching what makes your new business an exciting and worthwhile investment. You may not realize it right now, but you do have a one-of-a-kind story to tell, one that makes you stand out from everyone else—a unique tale that makes you, your product, or your business unforgettable. In One Perfect Pitch, Marie Perruchet will help you discover it, hone it, and present it, so that you get buy-in from colleagues and potential investors. Learn: • How to mine the worst experiences of your life for your pitch • How to tell me, show me, and sign me up in one minute • How to make a good impression through any medium • The dos and don’ts of pitching etiquette—and how to correct common mistakes • The unspoken rules in Silicon Valley A former mentor at 500 Startups, where she was a pitching coach to world-changing companies at one of the largest incubators in the U.S., Perruchet shares her proven methodology, insider advice, and hands-on exercises. She provides a step-by-step framework that ensures you are pitch perfect whenever you need to sell an idea, a product, a business—or yourself. Marie Perruchet is the founder of One Perfect Pitch, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. Drawing on her experience as a BBC journalist and news correspondent, she works with business executives to shape their stories and deliver effective pitches. As a former mentor at 500 Startups, the largest accelerator program in the U.S., she helped prepare startup founders and entrepreneurs for Demo Day, when they pitch venture capital funds and angel investors. Her clients include multinationals, tech incubators and accelerators, startup founders and entrepreneurs, and portfolio companies. Perruchet also coaches C-level executives from around the world and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, and Le Monde.
The Breakfast Club meets The Silver Linings Playbook in this powerful, provocative, and heartfelt novel about twelve endearing strangers who come together to make the most of their final days, from New York Times bestselling and award-winning author J. Michael Straczynski. Mark Antonelli, a failed young writer looking down the barrel at thirty, is planning a cross-country road trip. He buys a beat-up old tour bus. He hires a young army vet to drive it. He puts out an ad for others to join him along the way. But this will be a road trip like no other: His passengers are all fellow disheartened souls who have decided that this will be their final journey—upon arrival in San Francisco, they will find a cliff with an amazing view of the ocean at sunset, hit the gas, and drive out of this world. The unlikely companions include a young woman with a chronic pain sensory disorder and another who was relentlessly bullied at school for her size; a bipolar, party-loving neo-hippie; a gentle coder with a literal hole in his heart and blue skin; and a poet dreaming of a better world beyond this one. We get to know them through access to their texts, emails, voicemails, and the daily journal entries they write as the price of admission for this trip. By turns tragic, funny, quirky, charming, and deeply moving, Together We Will Go explores the decisions that brings these characters together, and the relationships that grow between them, with some discovering love and affection for the first time. But as they cross state lines and complications to the initial plan arise, it becomes clear that this is a novel as much about the will to live as the choice to end it. The final, unforgettable moments as they hurtle toward the decisions awaiting them will be remembered for a lifetime.
25 Steps to Found and Scale a High-Growth Business The Startup Checklist is the entrepreneur's essential companion. While most entrepreneurship books focus on strategy, this invaluable guide provides the concrete steps that will get your new business off to a strong start. You'll learn the ins and outs of startup execution, management, legal issues, and practical processes throughout the launch and growth phases, and how to avoid the critical missteps that threaten the foundation of your business. Instead of simply referring you to experts, this discussion shows you exactly which experts you need, what exactly you need them to do, and which tools you will use to support them—and you'll gain enough insight to ask smart questions that help you get your money's worth. If you're ready to do big things, this book has you covered from the first business card to the eventual exit. Over two thirds of startups are built on creaky foundations, and over two thirds of startup costs go directly toward cleaning up legal and practical problems caused by an incomplete or improper start. This book helps you sidestep the messy and expensive clean up process by giving you the specific actions you need to take right from the very beginning. Understand the critical intricacies of legally incorporating and running a startup Learn which experts you need, and what exactly you need from them Make more intelligent decisions independent of your advisors Avoid the challenges that threaten to derail great young companies The typical American startup costs over $30,000 and requires working with over two dozen professionals and service providers before it even opens for business—and the process is so complex that few founders do it correctly. Their startups errors often go unnoticed until the founder tries to seek outside capital, at which point they can cost thousands of dollars to fix. . . or even completely derail an investment. The Startup Checklist helps you avoid these problems and lay a strong foundation, so you can focus on building your business.
In the words of novelist Harlan Ellison, "The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. New York Times bestselling author and British Academy Award nominee J. Michael Straczynski knew he wanted to be a writer ever since he was a child. What he didn't know was how to actually become, or stay, a writer. Now, he's giving fellow writers the comprehensive guide he wishes he had all along, personalized tips and techniques that can't be found in any other book on writing. Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer culls from Straczynski's more than thirty years of experience writing for film, television, books, and comics. Designed for writers in any stage of their career, this quirky, insightful and often humorous book provides an inside look at these industries with advice and wisdom covering such topics such as: • What fledgling writers need to know to improve and sell their work—and avoid wasting valuable time • Tips for experienced writers who want to get to the next level • Staying disciplined when writing is your day job • Why writers should never wait for inspiration • Story-planning strategies that don't kill your spontaneity • Expert techniques for effective, memorable world-building • How to get an agent and survive the writer's journey in more personal relationships • Revising and editing with precision • When and how to reinvent yourself as an artist Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer includes Straczynski's unique, tried-and-true methodologies that will help storytellers sharpen their work so that it's polished and ready for publication. Part toolbox and part survival guide, this book will be an indispensable guide throughout your entire writing career, offering fresh and practical insights every step of the way.
