DerekEastham said:
that is one of the accepted measures of distribution...
you could also open up a Z-shop on Amazon, or an E-bay store... more traffic there.
Hello, this is my first post on this forum.
Personally, I would go with something more specific than E-bay or even Amazon. While I have not used their services yet (because I am not yet ready for distribution), I plan on going with filmbaby.com, which, as far as I know, is run by the same people who gave the musicians the popular cdbaby.com distribution channel.
Filmbaby.com has an
online store, which handles all the details. They create a separate page for each DVD, which offers a description of the movie and even allows the potential customer to view a trailer. The customer just clicks to add the DVD to his shopping basket. While they do not mention this on
the page describing their services, we can get an Internet domain for each movie and simply forward it to the page on filmbaby. Or we can produce our own Internet page and just link to the filmbaby page, and things like that.
Additionally, they act as a
wholesale distributor making the DVD available to some 2400 retail stores, as well as to Netflix. Note I said
available. That means they will not actively promote to those stores, you have to do that. But the stores can order from them and they will promptly deliver to them.
We set our own prices, they keep $4 from each sale and forward the rest to us.
As I said, I have not used them yet, so I am basing this on the information available on their site. But I know about them through cdbaby.com, which has a very good reputation among independent musicians.
Their services are non-exclusive, so if you also want to sell through Amazon and E-bay or any other outlet, you still can.
They even accept DVD-R, so you can burn them yourself if you cannot afford having it replicated.
The catch? Well, I'm not sure it really is a catch, but they charge a one-time fee of $39.99 for each new title. This covers the building of your web page, scanning your artwork, and things like that. They have no annual fees and no expiration dates.
The main advantage, imho, is that when people come to someone else's page, they can eventually end up on yours. And the people who come there are looking for films, not for books (like Amazon) or auctions. Of course, as I said, you can also use those outlets.