About to list/sell through Amazon.com. I would appreciate a pep talk from someone who sells through Amazon about why it's worth putting up with with Amazon.com's predatory pricing for selling DVDs (55% commission, plus referral fees plus closing cost plus etc. etc.).

As lousy as the Amazon deal is it's better than you'd get with a regular distributor (about $3-$4 dollars per DVD). You might also want to take a look at www.createspace.com which does on demand delivery. They save you the upfront investment and you get your own ecommerce site with higher payments and still get ancillary sales from Amazon (at their draconian rates).

Thanks Rick; the CreateSpace disc-on-demand seems to be even worse in terms of overhead; their disc manufacturing costs at $5/unit is likely 5x their manufacturing costs (using Discmakers/Kunaki as an example). The example Amazon gives on CreateSpace (Amazon owns CreateSpace) is for a DVD that costs $25.00. Since DVD prices have tanked as online availability has increased, asking $19.99 seems a push nowadays. So that's $19.99 minus $4.95 minus $9.00 (45%) minus any other Amazon.com additions.

Oh well, we'll pray for a licensing deal...!

One reason: eyeballs.

Amazon is the number three search engine (after Google and YouTube) and has over 114 million active customers. Even if people aren't looking for your DVD, the odds are good people will see it.

The example Amazon gives on CreateSpace (Amazon owns CreateSpace) is for a DVD that costs $25.00. Since DVD prices have tanked as online availability has increased, asking $19.99 seems a push nowadays. So that's $19.99 minus $4.95 minus $9.00 (45%) minus any other Amazon.com additions.

If you'll check the Createspace website you'll find different numbers. I sell 2 different titles for $19.95 on Createspace. If my disc sells from Createspace (which is the URL I link to from my website and on YouTube) I make $12/disc. If it sells from Amazon I make $6/disc. Having done more traditional deals with distributors where I made $3-4/disc I'm pretty happy given that I don't have to do any work after creating the master disc. In the video world distributors make all the money not the creators of content.

Good luck with licensing deal!