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How to: Publish and sell your own DVD in two hours

Once you have a DVD in hand, before you finalize the cover art, you will need a barcode. Everything has to have a barcode right?

BarcodeAlso, several people have asked where they could get the DVD and instead of simply burning them and giving them away for free I figured we could sell them - we just needed someone to release and distribute it. So I went to the Internet (as I do for any question I have) to find out how one gets a barcode as well as a distributor. Here is what I learned:

  1. Get an ISBN. During the 19th century publishers started to systemize and cumulate the catalogs of publishers - today we use the ISBN. Basically the International Standard Book Number is a 10-digit number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products like DVDs. For around $250 you get an ISBN for your DVD or Book online by visiting http://www.isbn.org.
  2. Get a Bar Code. For an extra $25 you can have Bowker create a Bar Code from your assigned ISBN number.
  3. Next visit Amazon.com. Amazon has various options including their Marketplace and Paid Placements - I decided to go with their Advantage program for publishers. Neat deal: our DVD will be available to ship with 24 hours to customers, direct deposit funds to our account, and so on. The annual fee is $29 and they charge 55% as a commission - sort of steep - but what does a real publisher charge? (that is a question - please comment) Once you have an account you can enter your ISBN number and they will start selling them. I will update once I get that far (it only took me two hours to figure all of this out and blog about it here)…
  4. Next get it on NetFlix. This was very simple - just email your contact information to content@netflix.com and they will include your DVD on their titles list. I will let you know if it actually works.
  5. Next you can try to get it on DVDStation. They give DVDs that grossed less than $5MM at the box office (this would be a fit for MSR - we grossed $0) a place in the video store. All revenue is split 50/50 less a credit card transaction fee of .35 cents. Oh and they keep the first $25 for themselves. Oh and they charge you $25/year to keep it in stock. Napoleon Dynamite was sold via this system and generated $100MM in video store rentals. Visit Sub5 and submit your DVD information. They will give you a code and an address to ship your DVD. I will keep you posted if we get added.
  6. Oh and if you want to trade your DVD - i.e. get another one in return you can try PeerFlix. This is not a great method of making money…:)

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