HubPages Success Story: Earl S. Wynn & TV Producers

We saw an exciting announcement from Hubber Earl S. Wynn this week – in case you did’t see the forum thread, here’s what he had to say:

This is pretty mind blowing.

I got a call the other day from a TV production executive about one of my old articles called 101 reasons to stay single (which is funny, because I’m now happily engaged, haha) Apparently, it caught someone’s eye and they were impressed enough to option it for $500 for six months so they could have exclusive rights to buy the article and make it into a TV show for another $2500. Holy cow!

I’m pretty stoked! Thank you, Hubpages! I’m definitely going to be writing more Hubs now! Just goes to show, persistence pays off! Keep hubbing, Hubbers!

Pretty cool, huh? We decided to catch up with Earl S. Wynn to get some more fun details on his experience.  Check out our interviewbelow:

What inspired the Hub?

When I wrote 101 Reasons to Stay Single, I had just emerged from a crazy relationship with a woman who stalked me for close to a year afterward. It was nuts! You know, the 3am phone calls where the person just breathes and presses numbers, the endless blocking of new email accounts sending endless insane love letters. It started to get in the way of my work, both online and offline, which really made me angry. That’s where this Hub originally came from– I wrote it out of sheer bitterness and anger. It really honestly and truly epitomizes everything that was wrong with that relationship (and everything that I swore I would never put myself through again.) In retrospect, I think its hilarious that it has become so popular. I honestly never expected it to get more than a handful of pageviews, and here I am, two years later, getting engaged to the most wonderful woman on Earth and talking with a production executive about adapting that list into a TV show. It’s really crazy in a really awesome way.

How long did it take for you to come up with all those reasons to stay single?

I pride myself on my ability to design, build and launch articles and lists like 101 Reasons to Stay Single in a matter of hours. This particular one only took three or four hours to complete (and that includes stopping to get coffee, snacks, etc.) I think my fastest ever 101 list was done in less than an hour.

You mention in your forum post that you are now happily engaged! Are you planning to create a 101 Reasons to Get Married Hub?

Funny you’d ask! I’m actually in the process of building one right now and expect to have it done very soon (its progress is being slowed by the pyrography tutorials I’ve been building and putting out on HubPages lately.) Also, I worked with a similar concept a few months into my relationship with my fiancé in a Hub I called “101 Ways to Show Your Love.” It’s even dedicated to her!

[UPDATE: Earl’s Hub on 101 Reasons to Get (and Stay!) Married is published! You can view it here]

What were your original goals with HubPages? Did you ever expect something like this to happen?

Honestly, when I discovered HubPages two and a half years ago, I figured it was just a cute idea for a place to stick some of the random science articles I’d written over the years (without having to give over exclusive rights, etc.) I’ve always believed that artists should be in control of their work and Hubpages is one of the few sites I’ve worked with that allows its writers to do that. That’s really what kept me coming back all these years, (that and the fact that the traffic to HubPages can be pretty darn amazing) and I refer people to the site just for that reason. Being a self-managing writer is one of the causes I’ve always championed in any way I could. It’s the future, it’s where art is going thanks to the awesomeness of the internet, and I plan to be right there at the forefront when the old models of publishing (where authors are stripped of all rights) fall by the wayside like so much dead wood. One of the things I do as a writer outside of HubPages is maintain a series of online magazines which provide powerful platforms for new and emerging fiction writers to be published and get the publicity their skills deserve. Ultimately, its up to a given writer to have the persistence to keep hitting walls until they break through to the point of being able to make a living by writing, but it helps to have people along the way who are willing to read your manuscripts instead of just rejecting them without even giving them a once-through.

But did I ever expect to get contacted about making anything I’d written into a TV series? Not really. I mean, I always hoped that something like this would happen– you know, you wish, you pray, you give it your all, but when it actually happens, its pretty mindblowing. My fiancé has had complete faith in me the entire time, by the way. She’s honestly the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and one of the reasons why I didn’t just give up on writing altogether at some point in the past. She’s given me at least a hundred and two reasons not to be single.

[Congrats, Earl! You can read 101 Reasons to Stay Single here]