If your agent or publisher is jumping up and down at the thought of your novel, it's because they're picturing the movie poster on the side of the bus.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writers want publicity all the time, and they are always nagging their agents and publishers to give them more publicity, but, when you get it, it's kind of soul-destroying.
Any time you read a book and get attached to the characters, to me it's always a shock when it goes from page to screen and it's not exactly what was in my head or what I was imagining it should be.
My books come to me in images, and sometimes the image is at the beginning of the book, and sometimes it's simply a flash somewhere in the middle.
To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.
Books are my art. The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books.
What I think happens, and that you have to acknowledge though, is that a director uses a book as a launching pad for his own work and that's always very flattering.
There's a difference between publicity and marketing. A lot of writers don't realize how much marketing goes on beyond the scenes, with sales reps and advanced reading copies, all that stuff that happens months before a book is published.
As an author, you can't expect a movie to be an illustration of the book. If that's what you hope for, you shouldn't sell the rights.
As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung.
All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it.