What You Must Know About Amazon CreateSpace
Diary of a film startup part 48
Filmmakers frequently upload their movies to Kinonation after they’ve submitted to Amazon’s CreateSpace service. This is a truly excellent service for book authors, musicians and filmmakers to self-publish their creative work and make it available on Amazon.com. And in the context of films, a good way to make DVDs available without upfront expense.
BUT: for getting a film onto Amazon there are many reasons to use a specialist VOD aggregator like Kinonation, instead of CreateSpace. I’m not saying that out of self interest. Yes, Kinonation (or any aggregator) takes a fee or percentage of gross revenue – in our case 20%. But it’s much more about video quality, speed, marketing and, above all, access to many more Amazon US and global platforms, including Amazon Prime.
Amazon Prime
CreateSpace will enable your film for Amazon Instant Video only, but you will be ineligible for Amazon Prime. I can’t explain why, only that it’s the reality. For most independent films this is a massive drawback. Realistically, Amazon Prime is where you would otherwise get the vast majority of audience views. Often we see good films on Amazon Instant via CreateSpace that aren’t getting watched at all, with few if any reviews. Submitting via an aggregator makes your film eligible (at your discretion) for Amazon Prime. Once you’ve submitted via CreateSpace you will not be able to subsequently use an aggregator to get your film on Prime without first cancelling your CreateSpace contract. This can take several weeks.
No Windowing
Many filmmakers will want to “window” their VOD release, with a transactional (TVOD) window followed by – say 60 days later – an SVOD release. Aggregators can arrange this with Amazon, beginning with AIV then opening up to the tsunami of nearly 20 million Amazon Prime subscribers. You’ll only get $0.10 a view, but those dimes add up fast. But as noted above, if you’ve used CreateSpace, your film simply isn’t eligible for Prime. Wasted opportunity.
HD vs. SD
Filmmakers typically mail a DVD to CreateSpace which they’ll “rip” to extract the video & audio files. Consequently the files (film & trailer) will be quite low quality, and insufficient for an HD version of your film on Amazon Instant. And so your beautifully shot high-definition movie will be available only in standard def. Not good in 2014. Whereas uploading your 100GB ProRes file to Kinonation enables us to deliver a VERY high quality 30-40GB mezzanine file to Amazon – resulting in a superb HD experience for viewers. Big difference.
Go Global
Submitting to Amazon via aggregators like Kinonation makes your film eligible for the rapidly expanding group of global Amazon platforms, including UK, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, etc. Of course, the film still needs the relevant language assets – subtitles or audio dub – but you can add these in the future as the ROI becomes more clear.
Marketing
Having an aggregator deliver to Amazon makes the film eligible for the aggregator’s marketing expertise and efforts. This can make a huge difference – we wince when we see a film on Amazon via CreateSpace with execrable poster art, unreadable title or tagline, poorly written description, etc. It’s so important to work with someone who can help get these basics right for VOD. At Kinonation, we work directly with filmmakers to maximise their film’s chances to stand out from the crowd. This includes the basics – poster art, tagline, press quotes, etc. We also write customized descriptions and keywords for every film. And we advise on promotional tactics that truly maximise a film’s chances of success.
Speed
Finally…submitting via an aggregator will typically get your film onto Amazon much faster than submitting via CreateSpace. Delivery to “live” delays vary, but it’s around 60 days for CreateSpace, and roughly half that via Kinonation.