02.07.26
I just got my sales and royalties statement. The results were not good.
Yesterday I received quarterly sales reports from my main distributor (I have catalogue with various distributors, but one major one). My studio was self-financed, didn’t work on commission, almost never entered into co-productions, and although we do have traditional sales agents and distribution (a topic for another day), our catalogue belongs exclusively to us, all the rights. Minus distribution cuts, all the revenues come to us.
I read yesterday’s statements and was immediately seized by anxiety. My runway to build something new may be shorter than I’d hoped. These royalties, and I think this will be familiar to those working in the commercial film space, have been declining precipitously for years. Amazon are one of the worst offenders, if not the worst, they pay a fraction of what they paid five years ago, even though the product remains the same and audiences are just as interested in it as they ever were.
I can see the underlying data, the numbers that Amazon is driving in terms of watches; some of this is T-VOD, it’s not just ads and subscriptions – some people are actually paying to watch our films, and yet what the producer, the rights-holder, ultimately ends up with is a pittance.
I first grasped this phenomenon about ten years back. We had a film which did very well - television all over the world, it keeps on running even now, routinely relicensed by one of the major European broadcasters, streaming worldwide. And I remember seeing the numbers back then, and being astonished both by the number of people who’d watched the film on Amazon (hundreds of thousands, into millions over time) and by what we received for it. It just looked like piracy and theft to me.
It seemed clear at that time that a cartel was forming (which has now formed), and that independent producers had no power to challenge the inequity of this, the only option was to swallow it. Today, the situation has degraded even further.
Whenever you embark on something new, it is often in the teeth of doubt and apprehension, your mind embraces any opportunity to tell you that you’re doing exactly the wrong thing – disastrous, foolish. Stephen Pressfield readers will recognise the resistance that attends any attempt to find your higher calling. And so looking at yesterday’s statements, I found myself asking, “what have I done?”.
The films on these statements are commercial projects. The whole motivation behind leaving my company was that I no longer wanted to be focused on the commercial value of what I made – we’re talking some of the biggest subjects in the world here, subjects that people are searching for round the clock, which market and sell themselves; and yet the money that’s coming back from it is pathetic.
My internal voice berated me: “My god man! You’ve left this to try and do something less commercial? Are you insane? You have chosen to head into penury; your family is going to be out on the street. What twisted thinking could have polluted your mind so drastically?”
After regathering myself, I eventually drew precisely the opposite conclusion. I am not exchanging a comfortable situation for an uncomfortable one. These statements are telling the story of a struggling industry, and it’s been struggling for some time. If even the commercially orientated business looks uncommercial, then what’s the point of it? We are basically involved in a largely uncommercial industry, there’s got to be easier ways to make money.
Last year I went to the offices of one of the biggest YouTube channel networks out there. Several of our films, and one in particular, are the best performers on their channels, so they were keen to take the meeting. We came to discuss how we might capitalise on the success, and explore opportunities to grow the partnership. The top people in the organisation came into the meeting, and the first thing that one of them said was, “so, it’s not all bad news!”. Now, if someone you’ve never previously met in person, in opening a meeting to discuss recent successes, comes out with “it’s not all bad news”, that tells you, immediately, that it’s horrendous news. Something’s profoundly wrong here.
So the question that (re)asserted itself to me yesterday is whether I want to make work that’s uncommercial but which I’m passionate about, and feel strongly about, and is authentic to me. Or whether I want to make work designed to maximise revenue, and yet the revenues will be pretty paltry anyway?
I know that I asked and answered this question several years ago, and the objective facts are not going to change anytime soon. I am doing my own thing, but as far as where the revenue comes from… I return to it: there must be better ways to make money, but I don’t yet know what they are. I’m going to have to find out.
And so the anxiety dissipated. Thinking through the situation clarified for me that I am doing the right thing, I’m not crazy. It’s everything else that is mad, and it should have stopped before now.