"John the Angry Mover" Short Comedy Film on Createspace / Amazon

So, I'm all excited about having my first short film finished "John the Angry Mover." Before I sent the film off for the first 200 copies to be manufactured, I sent a copy to "Create Space" which is Amazon's cool new program that allows indie film makers, authors and musicians to sell directly to the public. I read about the service, which was also heavily promoted on withoutabox.com and I decided to use it. The concept is simple. Send them just a regular DVD copy of your film, and they will create a page that pays you for 3 different services.

1st, they sell your physical DVD on demand, meaning, that they actually manufacture a dvd, put it into a case, print the cover, process the transaction & send it to the customer every time it is ordered. All you do, is sit back and collect a royalty check, after they do all the hard work. This sounds great, but when you are distributing a 25 minute short film like me, and I set the retail price at 9.99. I actually end up with $2.50 everytime someone buys it. Amazon gobbles up some serious profit. $4.99 to start, and then %50 of the rest. I can live with that though. It will be a better deal if you have a nice full length movie for $14.99. That way, each DVD sold will pay you $5.00.

2nd, they sell a download version of your film. This is pretty cool. No packaging and waiting, your customer just buys the download and you get paid %50. I like this! I suggested my retail price at $4.99, but Amazon eventually sets the price. I would get a $2.50 royalty per download, which is exactly the same royalty as the DVD in my case.

3rd, they sell a download rental. Now this is very interesting. It gives your customers a very inexpensive way to rent your film, for a low cost. How many times are you going to watch a 25 minute film. If you download it, and play it 3 times over a week, that's probably overkill. I think that the download rental lasts for a week, and then some encryption kicks in that disables the download, so that it won't play. Pretty clever. If the rental price is $2.00, then I can get a dollar off of each. I imagine, that would be the most popular option, and would add up over time.

As far as createspace.com goes, I have opted for option 2 and 3 because I decided to manufacture my own DVD and sell it myself. I started with ebay, but that's another story.. I sent just a regular DVD-R video version of the film to createspace. It didn't even have a menu on it. They responded within 2 business days that they had received my package, which I thought was prompt. Then they sent an email to me, explaining that it would take 10 business days to digitize it, and have it ready for download.