Screenwriting : Coverfly by Andy Celis

Hi Andrea. Coverfly is a very reputable organization. As is FilmFreeway. Both of these organizations are there to help writers submit to contests. Make sure your script is protected through the US Copyright office before you send it out. Once you do that, it's time to get some eyes on it! All the best.

These days just about everyone is milking the general public for $. I guess they’ve become a household brand in the aspiring screenwriting community. One guy I know swears by them, made some hookups through Coverfly (while living in Los Angeles). He just got his WGA union card this year.

Personally speaking as another aspiring writer, just my personal opinion only... I steer clear of Coverfly, The Red List, and all things owned by Red Ampersand their parent company. Red Ampersand owns 15+ companies running 15+ competitions, I believe? They also bought or merged with The Tracking Board. Coverfly and anything like it causes me pause and I think twice before entering any competitions—although I haven’t entered any in years by choice. Any screenwriting contest that I do consider I read all the fine print to see who and what services and affiliations that they have, who owns what and who is being hired, such as reading services, etc, and if there are real-world tangible benefits. But I’m not one for databases and/or listing services and/or arbitrary scoring systems. I do just fine on my own. Others may feel differently—there was a huge blow up about Coverfly about two years ago, I believe? Anyhoo, my advice, always do your due diligence and do whatever makes you feel comfortable. ;)

If helpful, John August and Craig Mazin discuss Coverfly on the Scriptnotes podcast, Episode #355.

There was quite a Coverfly thread on here a while back that you can search. I was an active part of that.

I will say that Scot of Coverfly was always very good about responding to the threads and subsequent to those posts, he has responded promptly to my questions regarding when and how one would get listed on Coverfly by entering contests.

He told me in our last exchange that if you enter a contest using Coverfly, your script will be posted, but if you enter via FF or other means, despite affiliation with Coverfly, your script will not get posted or included in data.

That said, the concept of Coverfly, how data is used, etc. is outside my personal boundary of comfort. For the same reasons I do not use Twitter or Facebook. That's me in my cranky Luddite-ness at its brightest.

My recommendation, trust your belly barometer.

There are companies/hedge funds that run a lot of screenwriting competitions/services but actually have little to offer in terms of actual career advancement, Do a Google search on the subject, there is plenty of evidence. If you want exposure via competitions, stick to the top five.. If you want to impress people who don't know any better, heck, enter whatever you want.