Book Deal? Distro Deal? Big Deal.
Once upon a time I had one 28 minute film that was way too explicit to put on cable TV and way too much talking to sell in a porn store. Naturally I thought such a provocative approach to movie-making would be a natural on the film fest circuit, but that was before I actually knew what film festival are really about. Film festivals weren’t interested either. That doesn’t mean people didn’t like Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story, a lot of people liked it a lot, even some big deal important media people. They said it was a great film, but it was “distribution proof.”
Tens of thousands of DVDs later, I think it’s fair to say they were wrong. Well, sort of wrong…
I have a good friend who has written a very good instructional book about a subject with a proven and easy to reach market. He’s been approached by a publisher who would like to publish his book. They’ve offered him a book deal.
But my friend is going to say no to their book deal. He’s run the numbers, and if (if) the publisher sells 10,000 my friend might see about as much money in his pocket as if he sells 1,000 copies himself. He also knows the market and knows it would be unlikely in the extreme that any publisher could ever move 10,000 copies. On the other hand, he is reasonably sure that 1,000 copies will be a easy, 2,500 not unreasonable, and 5,000 not unthinkable.
So he’s going to self-publish.(By the way, this friend of mine is the same person who taught me how to shoot film effectively on an ultra low-budget, so if you like the way our films look, a lot of the credit belong to him.)
Self-distribution or self-publishing don’t get much respect in the media world. They’re regarded as the realm of the dilatant, the talentless or the foolish; rung above (or maybe) below vanity press. Self publishing as always been seen as the realm of people who desperately want to see their name on the cover of a book and don’t care how much it costs.
Indeed, when we made our first 1,000 copies of MARIE AND JACK I had visions of selling a few hundred copies, then watching the remainder take up space in our garage until I finally was ready to admit to failure and take them to the dump. I had vivid imaginings of one of my daughter’s classmates mothers catching me dumping hundreds of unwanted copies of my homemade porn in to the dumpster. I wasn’t scared of losing the $1,500 or so it cost for the first pressing, but I was scared of being embarrassed that I had thought enough of my own film to try to sell it when everyone had told me it was distribution proof.
So, why is this on my mind right now?
Well in the last month we have been approached by two medium-sized home-video distribution companies, I have been asked for book proposals by two different reasonably respectable publishing houses, and have been approached about doing a “The Business of Indie Filmmaking” seminar next Winter.So I’m thinking about this stuff, how it all works or doesn’t work, how we have or haven’t made it work for us, and what I would say if someone said “Tony, how do you make a living making movies?”
So in the same way that I’ve used this blog as a think space some of my about the collision of sex and cinema, I’m going to see if I can’t use it to start to distill what I’ve learned about the business, and how that might be useful to people who are (or want to be) in the business of being creative.
How do you design a project that can make money? How do you execute? What to do when it’s finished? How do you connect with, and keep an audience? And on and on.
Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll still have a good rant now and then. And more importantly we’ll be having some previews from our upcoming BILL AND DESIREE very soon!
