I mention The Hollywood Creative Directory quite often in my posts. It’s a great source of contact information for nearly every production company in the United States. You can buy a hard copy from Amazon.com, which I highly recommend. Having the hard copy allows you to go back to it often and send out query letters over a long period of time.
However, I’ve had a few people ask me if there was a cheaper way to obtain the information in the HCD. If you go to the HCD website, http://www.hcdonline.com/, they’re now offering a subscription service which is less than $20 per month. Join for one month, go through every company and copy and paste the information into a Word or Excel document for later use. While this will take a bit of time it will be cheap. Just make sure you cancel your subscription before the month ends or you’ll be auto re billed for the next month.
Another good idea is to go to http://www.imdb.com and sign up for their free period to access imdbpro. This gives access to current contact data for all the international and domestic entertainment people and companies one can imagine.
Copying the information can take a long time as there are so many people and companies in so many countries.
Cancel your free subscription or you will get charged next month but definitely worth checking into…
Sandford Tuey
http://www.Playdigm.com
This is a really good idea. But it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that the printed editions get outdated quickly as people move around, especially recently with the William Morris merger. Also, the online version allows quick copy and paste. Even if you have the online version for two months…long enough to do some serious email or snail mail blasts, it’s still cheaper than the printed version.