Last year, a short film of mine was selected for screening at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. More recently, I had the idea of selling copies of the film on DVD. So far, I have sold a few copies at a local market which I'm happy about. The film features Australian wildlife and landscapes so I figured it might be of interest to international tourists. It was mainly foreign tourists who bought the DVD at my market stall so perhaps no surprise there.

Anyhow, recently I contacted a store via e-mail that sells mainly tourism related merchandise and asked if they would be interested in selling copies of my DVD. I forwarded a private online link to my film to the manager and she seemed to like what she saw.

Now usually, when local artists supply their craft products (cards etc) to stores and outlets, I notice that generally they hand them over for free and if some copies are sold, the store takes a commission and the artist receives the rest of the amount. And that's what I assumed would happen in my case too with the DVDs.

To my surprise, the manager of the tourism store got back to me recently and asked how much I was planning to sell the DVDs to her at wholesale price. This is certainly not what I expected. Normally, I would jump at the chance of selling them outright like this but I'm a little hesitant in this situation. Let's remember that it is a short film that I'm selling here � running at 8 minutes. Although there is also over half an hour's bonus content contained on the disc, it is essentially an 8 minute film that is the main feature (and it's not even 'feature' length.)

In order for me to make a decent profit from the production of the DVDs, I price them at $12 each and that's what Ive been selling them at the markets for. If I was to sell them to this store at $12 for wholesale price, I assume that the retail price would be at least double that � so at least $24. Now I could be wrong but I can't visualise many people spending $24 or more on an 8 minute film. Also consider that these days, you can buy a blockbuster movie on DVD for considerably less than that. Although selling the DVD at wholesale price would be better for me from a short term perspective, Ive got a feeling that handing them over to the store for free and accepting commissions on a lower retail price would lead to greater sales potential over the long term and may even result in the manager asking for more copies of the DVD in the future if sales are exceptionally good.

The other thing is she seemed a little hesitant about buying the DVDs because it's not the type of product she normally sells there. She said she was going to check her stats on similar products she has stocked before.

So what's everyone's opinion � hand them over for free and accept a commission on sales or sell them outright as wholesale? I admit I'm totally new to this as Ive never been asked to provide a wholesale price for a product before. Obviously, companies who do sell at wholesale prices have their products mass produced in the thousands or millions so they would get a much greater profit margin than me when selling wholesale. Whereas my packaged DVDs are not mass produced � there's only a very small number of them.

I the business of publishing either a book or movie, there are usually 2 types of deal.

1) Your investment. You burn all DVDs, design cover and make packing. Then sell in bulk by marking up your profit.

2) Publisher investment. In this case you only sell your content and rest of investment is of publisher. But in this type of deal, you will get at most 20% of sold copies.

So better be go with 1st type.

The OP only really has the option of going with option  1)... but has two choices within that option. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience in selling DVD's so can't advise on the best course of action.

Do the cases state the length of the film?

Yep, they do. I like to think of my DVD as a collection of different works. Yes, the main film is 8 minutes long but there is also over 30 minutes of bonus content including additional underwater footage of marine life, extended time lapse sequences, the film's trailer and various other gems. So think of it as being like an anthology.