The Reward for The Reincarnationist Papers started when Eric decided to self-publish his novel in 2009 but a chance reading of motivational and self-help giant, Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, 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 her art, but her marketing.
At first, Kiyosaki’s statement that marketing was equal to or potentially more important than the art itself infuriated Eric. But the more he thought about it, the more he thought he could put his experience in technology to work and he eventually thought, ‘why not crowdsource readers and empower them to be agents to help get the novel to a larger audience?’ So Eric put a reward on the first page of the novel (see it here) 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 book in a hostel in Nepal while traveling. Rafi loved the book and contacted Eric about the reward offer then set about getting The Reincarnationist Papers adapted into a motion picture. True to his word, Rafi brokered an option to Bellevue Productions who contracted screenwriter Ian Shorr to adapt a screenplay. In 2017, Bellevue sold Shorr’s adapted screenplay, INFINITE, to Paramount Pictures. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg and Chiwetel Ejiofor and opened in June of 2021.

Maikranz paid the reward to Rafi in December 2019 after the Paramount deal closed, the same month that this journey came full circle when a literary agent approached Eric and helped him ink a book deal with a traditional publisher for this debut novel and others in the series.

Now Eric Maikranz is offering the exact same reward to any reader who can help get The Reincarnationist Papers published in translation.

As of November 2021, all languages are available (except Dutch and German) and readers are encouraged to contact Eric directly with the subject line “Reward.” See details on the REWARD offer here.