The story of The Reincarnationist Papers, like most longshot success stories, starts with rejection and failure. D. Eric Maikranz finished this debut novel in 2007 and submitted it to literary agents. But a debut novel about a young man who is haunted by the total memory recall of two past lives and then stumbles upon a centuries-old secret society of similar individuals was a bit outside of the comfort zone of traditional publishing and Maikranz’s story was met with resistance and rejection. Many would have taken the series of closed doors as a message from the entertainment world that his art wasn’t good enough, but he was encouraged by early readers of the book who raved about it and wanted to see it as a movie.
As a fallback, D. Eric Maikranz decided to self-publish the novel in 2008 but a chance reading of motivational and self-help giant Robert Kiyosaki sparked anger and then sparked an idea that changed everything. Kiyosaki relayed a conversation he had with an author who was struggling to break in and get published. The author lamented that she felt her writing was good enough and her novel and characters were interesting and compelling enough, but she kept getting rejected. Kiyosaki told her that what she needed to focus on wasn’t his art, but her marketing.
At first, Kiyosaki’s statement that marketing was equal to, or potentially more important than the art itself infuriated Maikranz as an artist. But Eric was more than an artist, he was also a business executive with a decade of marketing experience and eventually anger turned to inspiration as he realized that his readers were the true consumers and arbiters of good art. He thought, ‘why not empower his readers to be his agents to help get the novel to a larger audience?’ D. Eric Maikranz then put a cash reward on the first page of his novel and set the price as low as Amazon would let him in order to reach as large an audience as possible:
The Guerilla Marketing idea of putting a cash reward on the first page of the book for any reader who could make an effective introduction to a Hollywood studio executive or major publishing executive seemed like an outlandish idea – until it worked.
It didn’t take long for the first queries from the crowd-sourced readers to trickle in, but the breakthrough happened on Thanksgiving Day, 2010, when Rafi Crohn, Vice President of a Hollywood production company, found The Reincarnationist Papers in a hostel in Nepal while traveling. Rafi read the book, loved it, contacted Maikranz about the reward offer and then set about getting Eric’s novel adapted into a motion picture. True to his word, Rafi Crohn brokered an option for Maikranz’s novel to Bellevue Productions who contracted screenwriter Ian Shorr to adapt a screenplay. In 2017, Bellevue sold Shorr’s adapted screenplay, INFINITE, to Paramount Pictures.
Paramount brought on Lorenzo di Bonaventura to co-produce along with director Antoine Fuqua and stars Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The movie is scheduled to premiere August 7, 2020.
Maikranz paid the reward to Rafi Crohn in December 2019, the same month the journey for The Reincarnationist Papers came full circle when a literary agent approached Eric and helped him ink a multi-book deal with a traditional publisher for his debut novel and others in the series.