Distributing your film on Amazon.com

I don't do domestic -- too unpredictable. Foreign market logistics make more sense: buyers from 150 territories spend $3-$15 thousand dollars each to attend these markets and buy films. If they don't buy films, what will they sell in their territories? Why are they spending this money? Is it only a vacation? No, not likely. The foreign buyers will buy; they have to. If we, the indie filmmakers, take 5 or more movies to the market, we share the expenses, which run about $15,000 minimum per market. If we each take one movie, the chances of making money are slim. We probably won't even recover the money we spent attending the market. Plus if we go with 5 or more movies we are going to be taken seriously as film suppliers. The first market I attended was AFM in 1985. I've kept up with all the markets over the years.
 
And also, at the foreign markets all the major and mini-major American distributors are present -- buying films. So if they like your film, they will pick it up right then and there. So it pays off to go to these markets, but like I said, you have to have enough films to justify the expense of attending.
 
I have not attended a market myself yet, but from what research I've done, as a seller, $15k only gets you through the door and that between suite rental and hosting events, a sales budget of about $100k and showing up with a least three solid pictures was a good idea.
 
i'm selling manufactured dvds through amazon's advantage program (consignment). still 55% for them, 45% for me. not too bad for a short that's selling at $12.99, but now they are charging a $30 annual fee. i'd rather stick to filmbaby which charges no annual fee and i get $8.99 from each sale as opposed to $5.85 from amazon. amazon is big, but i've only had a handful of sales, whereas i've had substantially more through filmbaby. we've also got the film only (no bonus features) up on indieflix. just went live last week. so far no sales. it's all about marketing. once filmbaby gets the download ready, we'll be offering it for $5 to download, plus a $5 gift certificate if they upgrade to the full dvd.
 
Yeah that's really the problem, sure, Amazon is huge, I buy every DVD from Amazon basically, but that doesn't mean they are promoting our smaller products to buyers. Like I said I have two books up there, I don't sell that many copies of either one through Amazon directly. I send people to the Amazon link from my Websites, but it's a sales front for me, it's not like I expect people to stumble upon the books randomly. I'm sure it's happened but not often. Anyway the deal I have for my books, I don't make anything anyway. Paperback copies are like $20 and $25, I get about $2 to $2.50 per sale from the publisher, which is pretty bad.
 
That's true, Craig. If you want to do the foreign markets right, you go to spend $100,000 or more, but you don't have to if you have more movies, like at least five features (preferably 10 or more), then you don't have to advertise that much; the buyers will pass by your booth and buy. So you won't be able to sell for $25,000,000 per market, but then I'm not talking about taking movies that were shot for $15,000,000. If I get $50,000 in deposits per movie, I'll be happy. Also, that's why I'd like to take features shot on digital -- straight to DVD -- to the market, movies that cost $5 to $25,000 max. Then every indie filmmaker with me will get their budget back within one market period. When the balance of the payments comes in from the buyers (the balance is 80%), then the filmmakers will have a lot more money than Internet sales.

If you have one to three movies, shot for $300,000 a piece, even if you spend $100,000 on marketing, you will still get $50,000 advance per movie, and that means the indie producer will not get their money back for three years. That's the difference. It's dangerous for indie filmmakers to go over $25,000 without a big star in their movie (no B-name is going to do it). That's the reality of it. Again, this is my opinion based on 30 years of attending foreign markets -- Cannes, AFM, MIFED.
 
Amazon so far has been the best for me. I work through CreateSpace.com and they put your movie, cd or book on Amazon. They're a subsidiary. It's a good idea to put older movies on Amazon, because nobody will buy an older movie in the foreign market. With new movies it's best to hold on to them and take them to the foreign market together with other filmmakers, as I've suggested. By being too much in rush to market a movie and sending it around to too many distributors, you give the impression that the film has been around for a long time and it didn't sell. Also too many festivals is bad, because your audience has already seen the movie. Indie movies get dated too quickly. With Internet distribution, new strategies must be developed.
 
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