[troyinjapan]

It's not just $20 a month, but you need to pay for 2 script reads, $50 each, so the first month's total is $120. Realistically, it's $140, as it takes a while to get the 2 script reads. If you score high enough, you get put on the highlight email list. If you don't, you're just available for discovery. Basically, if you don't score high enough, you're wasting your money.

The author didn't understand that you're paying for access, if your script scores high enough.

[6stringmerc]

Here's the deal though, if there's no consistency to the scoring, what are you paying for? Even if a piece scores highly, access to an audience isn't any more of a guarantee of feedback than posting a piece on Medium.

What I meant to get to, and as your response shows I missed something, my bad, was quality has a tendency to go viral. Getting into some outlets - most notably Contests - then backing things up with Hosting is a good order of operations long-term.

I know the whole song and dance of paying for "exposure" and never once did I recoup. That's what bugs me about the business model - most every client will be in the red. Even if they score high enough.

Or, in other words, it's nice to be the best looking person in the strip club, but business is business.

[innocentoldguy]

Are you really wasting your money though? Having someone read and critique your work is extremely valuable, even if you rank low (well, it is if you're willing to listen). I cannot emphasize the value of constructive criticism enough. My degree is in creative writing, and by far the biggest value I received from college came through both offering and receiving criticism.

I've never received an evaluation from The Black List, but if you actually get what their FAQs promise, "Your evaluation will include an overall rating and ratings on premise, plot, characters, dialogue, and setting, all from 1 to 10. It will also include brief answers about the script's greatest strengths, weaknesses, and commercial prospects." I think the price-to-value ratio of their service is quite good.

[otoburb]

>>I think the price-to-value ratio of their service is quite good.

One almost wishes a similar service for scientific papers exists along the lines of a "paid dry-run peer review". Unfortunately this probably wouldn't take away from the need/burden of unpaid paper refeering for journals, but at least it's an idea to make another revenue stream available to staff doing the actual work that doesn't get co-opted by Elsevier or their non-open access ilk.