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The greatest preachers claimed to have been rescued from sin, though that certainly does not stop the collection plate being passed around.

No, my suspicions are based on having read several how-to books regarding writing for commercial publication, and all of them were scams. How I might say they were scams is based on treatment of writing as if there were little difference between non-fiction, genre-fiction, non-genre-fiction, and TV/movie fiction except for a matter of marketing. Moreover, red flags go off when the "reviews" are all 5 starred.  And  "winning an audience to your story" is a feel-good platitude  that says nothing because no one will write for no audience even if there be a catharsis or the like effect in that writing.

If we are to ignore his screenwriting qualifications, what qualifications, tangible or otherwise, does he have? Does he, for example, point to a classic novel and analyze how it might written/marketed today? Something along those lines where he does distinguish a type of fiction that is not obviously commercial but may be made so, or is his advice to never write anything of the type that does not fit a commercial-fiction formula?

You recommended a book written by an MFA in screenwriting, and I opine that a screenwriter has little to recommend for a novel/short story writer except in the broadest possible terms (i.e., have a protagonist). Your response almost proves my point in that you could not refrain from referencing LOTR, the movie series, and not the series of novels by Tolkien that barely resemble each other. If Matt Bird, MFA in screenwriting, has something for the novelist, does he actually use a novel as an example?

An invulnerable hero (the comic-book sort and many of the fantasy genre) is an extreme case of a character because he is not only not real but cannot be realistic, nor even an archetype of an ideal. So, your advice may, at best, apply to novel writing of a subset of one genre.

I provided insight into the subject with the posting in Literary Fiction Forum entitled "Serious Farce" , but I suspect that because you are not even a member of  the Forum you have and have had and will always have no interest in the topic or any novel purporting to be Literary Fiction and are never of the mind to understand the context of my Prologue to Remembrances and Reconciliation within farce that, not in 17th century drama, broadly means almost all of the synonyms you list above except, I'd like to think, "waste of time." Like a dead body presented in the first scene of a mystery, the words of the Prologue are an introduction to the story but the significance, the farcical nature,  of which cannot be determined until reading through to the end of story. Absolutely, there is no determination of the value of the novella by the first three pages or first three chapters or all chapters until the very last word. There is an absurdity in such a description of an event that does not happen like the absurdity that corresponds to Marxism, Climate Change, President Hillary Clinton and any number of things you, especially, cannot ever find absurd, or funny, and therefore you are well outside the demographic of anyone interested in the novella.  However, as things ought to proceed, you would have read the entire 34,000 words of the novella and provided critique/commentary in the means for which Premium members expect rather than as homeless gutter-dweller sniping at your betters leaving a fine restaurant.

What?

Wow!  You give meaning to finding one's accusers out-of-touch with the reality of what else is out there in comparison.  Egotistical, diarrhea-mouth, blowhard ...

The fact of the matter, evidenced in my more recent fiction writing, is I find value in expressing more in fewer words, and, in fact, point to the folly of the naturalist detailing every single fact{*} while entirely missing the context and meaning of facts.

I learned from the age of twelve or so that the rejoinder "cite your sources" is pseudo-academic blather displaying ignorance of the subject matter because if one does not know what the sources might be, one is a pretender.

{*} in regards to this thread and TNBW generally, there is no good advice to describe characters' physicality, for example, unless there is relevance to the story - Boy meets girl who has red hair requires prior "red hair" description if the boy loves red-heads (or Irish, perhaps); otherwise, prose description is waste of words to write and to read. And the push to make a character, if not a kitten or adorable puppy, "likable" by way of described appearances is silly.

A life led around by Google, eh?  I cannot reveal my sources as anyone who reads my profile understands.

In the direct democracy of free-enterprise capitalism, the ticket purchasing movie-theatre-goer is more equal than others, if only, at least, for the divvying up of profits to those directly connected to the movie rather than to those farther downstream. There are indeed two issues in maximizing profits - the second being irrelevant to this discussion and the first being the initial marketing puts people in seats for the opening weekend, and TET had a poor opening weekend, but the audience picked up, then leveled off. The word of mouth effect might have initially been good but never escalated. It neither fit those who wanted more cerebral or those who wanted more lightness. It certainly is a movie that is trying very hard to please everyone but pleased no one in the details of what makes a good, better-than-average movie because the script/theme/action/dialogue is everywhere at the same time. It is a poorly written and utterly unoriginal. In the country that invented the American "film", the movie, the U.S. ticket-purchasing movie-goer is the most discriminating in the world, not for any artistic reason -- that is the "film" -- but for American cultural values.  Whatever was good in War of the Worlds (the Tom Cruise version in 2005) as a family movie, supporting family values, more so than in the original, was completely absent in TET. The initial marketing for WoW was vastly easier than for TET, but it soared to a summer blockbuster because it contained underlying American values. Some have have suggested that TET is an analogy to the muslim alien invasion of Europe centered in France which can only be stopped by Anglo-American greatness in the face of adversity. If that were true, few could realize it in the thick, discombobulated plotline, and certainly no Hollywood personage is going to promote it. Moreover, the foreign audience and downstream American audience is too obtuse to pick up on that message, and the theatre-going audience is not wanting to look for that, unlike as for 300, for example, and more obviously American Sniper and 13 Hours while, of course, Hollywood distances itself from admitting to messaging in that way.

Which original part did you like best: War of the Worlds, Groundhog Day, or Looper?

Note: The Don't's aren't from Matt Bird's book.

Yes, I would say that there is general confusion on a real distinction between novel writing and movie making, and that is why I think, for the most part, there is little good advice to a novelist from Hollywood unless there is an established feedback loop as between Steven King and Hollywood since he stopped writing novels as anything other than proto-movies years ago.

Yes, in a real novel there is much narration but not in movies. Voice-over narration is nearly taboo for film unless the voice is Orson Welles (Silent Snow, Secret Snow) or Anthony Hopkins (Alexander), and present-tense third-person? (Ferris Bueller?)

Looking to Hollywood hack writers for advice is looking to an industry that produces by far more failures than successes. Edge of Tomorrow (2014) lost $78 million and not because of bad acting or direction or lack of action/special effects or even the story's premise - it was the script, perfect to the formula in every respect.

Here's some other formulaic  don'ts

Stories written in present tense (especially third person present tense)
Stories with graphic dead baby scenes
Stories about writers
Stories about struggling marriages
Stories set in bars
Stories with more backstory than plot
Stories with undeveloped characters
Stories that are overly reflective

All of which  Edge of Tomorrow didn't do.

Certainly, your opinion counts here and anywhere. Your writing is of the workhorse in contemporary fiction and a model for anyone.

With dialogue tags or not, through explicit or implicit tagging, the established grammatical rule for writing dialogue is alternation. Once the order is established, a reader can figure out who has said or thought what. This may be from paragraph to paragraph or within any complex sentence.

He said. He thought.
She said.
He thought. He said.

He said, and she thinks; he said, but she says.

It is boring no matter how scintillating the plots and fascinating the characters to write 300 pp+ in such a fashion as: He said./She said./ This happened./That happened. He said./She said./ This happened./That happened. And on and on and on...

There is no established rule that punctuation for any component of what is said or thought be in italics. It is established grammar that thought and speech be distinguished, at least at first, by dialogue tags.

correct

"I say," he said. "I think," he thought.
"She says," she said.

incorrect

"I say," he said. I think.
"She says," she said.

Only the rule of alternation maintains.

Doubly incorrect

"I say," he said.
I think.
"She says," she said.

Because there is incorrect alternation from paragraph to paragraph, and because of some made-up rule considering italicization a form of dialogue punctuation.