DIY video distributors?

[James Steven Beverly]

I'm beginning production on a series of high quality DIY automotive transmission repair videos as a director / producer beginning in May. The project grew from a series of manuals on the subject written by a friend of mine along with his sister who also acted as a editor for the manuals. The manuals were surprisingly successful especially considering they were wholly self distributed.

 

The deal I made for producing and directing the series included backend so naturally I'm very interested is seeing to it that the videos get as much exposure as possible so I wanted to explore the possibility of using a niche distribution company to get the videos into video rental and retail outlets. Anyone have any experience and recommendations for which companies to approach and anything I should be aware of with this type of product distribution. Thanks-Steve B)

Edited April 15, 2011 by James Steven Beverly

[James Steven Beverly]

No Body??!! I'm kinda surprised, I woulda figured there would be several small market, specialty video film makers on this forum. Well any help would be welcome, Thanks-Steve B)

[Guest]

I hit it big in the instructional video business when I was a university student. I made two videos, Do Your Family Tree: Parts 1 and 2. People told me I was NUTS!

 

Then I made a deal with a big distributor that sells videos to libraries, and boom, it went ballistic. We fired 5, 000 copies out the door at $29.95 each in no time flat. There are 13, 000 libraries in the USA so selling to almost 50% of them is considered to be a huge success for any title.

 

Your product is very very specialized, you are covering just the transmission, so it's going to be a tough sell to libraries. If you had a series of 10 DVDs and each one covers the repair of a major component that would be different. In my case everyone on the planet has a family tree and it's a low cost hobby to pursue so it was a great fit for libraries.

 

I also sold a ton of videos via display ads in genealogy magazines. People called a 1-800 number and paid with their credit cards.

 

Of course these days all you need is a website and Pay Pal, 1000X easier and cheaper! What you will need is a way to drive traffic to the web site, a display ad in a print magazine bought by automotive guys is the best fit. The magazine will drive qualified buyers to the site, you'll need some sort of marketing support, otherwise no one will find your product.

[James Steven Beverly]

As always, great suggestions, Richie. We'll have to talk about making a deal for exclusive Canadian distribution :D I passed along some of your input onto the client and they agreed these ideas could definitely help move some of discs.

 

We've got a photoshoot for box art and poster. We want to set it apart from other automotive repair videos and have decided to add a little humor and a babe into the content of both the artwork and video. This should be a lot of fun to shoot while at the same time imparting a lot of great professional instruction on the subject. It'll be shot in HD on a Canon XH A1. The DP duties will fall to Mel Kekeuwa. I generally don't really like doing this sort of work but in this case I'm very much looking forward to it. B)