Selling door to door porn has got to be more lucrative than vacuum cleaners. Also I would expect a nicer reaction from the storekeepers to you and your posters and dvd's, rather than religous groups handing out religous leaflets.

Sounds like it was a breath of fresh air for the stores.

It reminds me of the stories of young rock bands with flyers and posters in Hollywood , many years ago.

Good job Tony.

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The funniest/weirdest part, is they were never intended to be sales calls. I just wanted to get my posters up, and I was worried that if I tried to pick and choose which places I'd ask, I'd lose my nerve and not go into any stores at all (no one likes hearing "no", and that includes me!). If I had been picking and choosing, I never would have gone into the porn palaces on Eighth Ave. But I went in asking if I could put up my poster and they wanted to buy discs right then and there. I had to call my wife and tell her to throw a few boxes of M&J and X&D in the Volvo before she came in for the screeening the next weekend!

Edited by - TonyC on 11/16/2006 2:34:43 PM

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You know, I notice a fair amount of non-"system" fare in those stores. And they do get a lot of tourists from places where they don't have porn shops.

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I had a flashback on an experience that Peggy and I had years and years ago. I don't remember why, but we ducked into a pornshop that I remember as being in the 20s near Park Ave. Like so many of the porn stores in NYC, this one was manned by subcontinental fellows and while we were looking for whatever we were looking for, this guy comes up in to us with some sort of butterfly strap-on vibrator and in an thick accent says "Theece won eese vethry nice for the laedies."

Our films do best at place that hand-sell them. The staff members at Goodvibes and similar shops really like our films, and that moves a ton of discs for us. I had always assumed that our titles would be lost in a NYC smut shop in much the same way that they're kind of lost on a site like AdultDVDEmpire.com. But maybe I'm wrong.

Unlike a website, when a couple (a tourist couple from somewhere with no porn stores perhaps) comes in an NYC smut shop, the shop keeper is going to see them, and maybe our experience all those years ago wasn't exceptional. Maybe right now there's a tourist couple from Kansas, in a New York porn store, with a shopkeeper holding up a copy of XANA AND DAX saying "Theece won eese vethry goodt for wawtching tewgethah."

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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That's not to say the distributors haven't perhaps failed to be appropriately proactive in seeking out niche products to appeal to untapped markets, and have therefore missed money-making opportunities as a consequence of their lack of vision and commercial savvy. As you suggest, there's undoubtedly a laziness factor. It's easier to sell what you know than what you don't, and that predisposition may skew perceptions about the likelihood of reaping substantial economic awards from the sale of non-traditional products.

At the same time, the feedback that Hustler (the ultimate "system" player) gave Joanna Angel about the lukewarm sales of her Alt Porn is provocative. In the mainstream film business, there's often a disjunction between critical acclaim and commercial success. There's a reason why small mainstream films that make a ton of dough are regarded as "breakthroughs". If it was a simple matter to makes piles of money from quirky, less expensively produced movies, we'd be seeing a lot more of them. I suspect this disjunction also applies to porn.

Still, in the mainstream film business there are some smart and aggressive distributors that have made large profits with niche movies -- Miramax/The Weinstein Company and Lions Gate come immediately to mind. It's notable, though, that part of the economic success of those companies can be attributed to their tenacity in making deals that are very unfavorable to the filmmakers themselves.

Aside from these considerations, there's the matter of economies of scale. What constitutes a worthwhile number of units sold for a smaller production company (whether mainstream or adult) might not work for a large distribution outfit relative to its overhead and the competition among a wide array of producers for its resources and attention. This problem may be intensified in the adult film business given the fairly small margins that most porn companies seem to work on, even ones making very "commercial" movies.

In any event, TonyC, you've started an interesting discussion.

*

[typos]

Edited by - Bob on 11/16/2006 9:06:34 PM

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As to the economics of scale in "the system", it's all a bit of a puzzle to me. The budgets, the units moved, the sheer number of titles you'd have to crank out to make a comfortable middle-class life for yourself and your family; well it all looks like an awful lot of work to me. It seems like there are easier ways to keep a roof over your head and your children's orthodontist bills paid, ways that don't involve being a social pariah.

Of course life's not all about money, is it? If it were, I probably wouldn't do what I do.

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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Looking through my library, I can tell you that 70% of the porn I've purchased this year was available through major online retailers (primarily Adult DVD Empire and TLA). The other 30% came from the websites of independent producers and female-friendly boutiques (especially Blowfish).

There are no bricks-and-mortar stores in my area.

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Edited by - skronker on 11/16/2006 5:21:42 PM

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__________________________________________

If only...

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While I don't that Comstock Films has a problem with "a" and "b", I do think you have a problem with "c".

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I purchased Marie & Jack, and Xana & Dax through your promoting them here at ADT. I would have never known about them otherwise.

Are your DVD's available in The Hustler Store's?

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Cleary "the system" is broken, at least as far as tending to our needs, and we've done what we needed to do to have some measure of success inspite of that. But that's not really what I'm on about, at least not on this thread.

The experience I had in my accidental door to door seige of (a small part of) Manhattan has me wondering just how well "the system" is serving consumers. There's got to be a reason that these shops were so eager to buy our work. No screener copy, no "lemme check the AVN review", just cash out of the till and gimme your card so I can call you when we need more. In point of fact, these sales were probably the easiest, most enthusiastic customers I've ever had, and I didn't have our fancy pants sales materials with all the write-ups in the national magazines our films have had.

I don't claim to know why it was so easy to sell our films to these places, but I intend to spend a little time and money trying to find out, and see if other stores that are a part of "the system" are as keen to have our films as there one were!

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A big part of the reason that we haven't is that in my experience, or at least my estimation, places like Hustler are terribly beaurocratic, and on top of that risk adverse, which makes the initial sale a real pain in the ass. That's where a distributor that was bundling you up with bunch of other stuff could be helpful.

OTOH, I don't know that our films do well when their bundled up. I think they get lost in the crowd with no one to tell the customer that our films are something different and special, we need that salesclerk who comes over to the intimidated couple, holding up a copy of XANA AND DAX and saying, "Theece won eese vethry goodt for wawtching tewgethah." In the stores where we get that, they do very well indeed.

Edited by - TonyC on 11/16/2006 11:22:11 PM

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Joe is very much his own man, no wife, kids, nothing to answer to except himself. So if doing things his way gives him the freedom to do things his way, then I say more power to him. His kids aren't going to show up in the ER when they have an ear infection cause he wants to be an artist.

My life is more middle of the bell curve, so I have to be more attentive to the bottomline in my work, and fortunately that is well-suited to my temprement. I don't think I'd enjoy living out on the edge the way that Joe does. Not surprisingly, Joe's work looks very different from mine.

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We get calls on a weekly basis from people who want to buy DVDs from us without using their credit card.

We get calls on a weekly basis from people who want to know if there's a store in their area that carries our films because they want to be able to pay cash and buy their smut annomymously. A few of these people are motivated enough to call back with contact information for whatever store they like to shop at and I can usually turn that information into a new wholesale customer. More often, the caller is never heard from again.

Can you imagine of the only way to buy hemoroid creme was to either a) provide a bunch of person information to god know who over the internet, or b) hump your ass across town to some cinderblock bunker with no windows. Now imagine never knowing if what was printed on the box was an accurate representation of what was in the tube! There'd be a lot of people walking around, scratching at their itchy enflamed assholes, but too nervous and/or embarrassed to go buy something that might help them out.

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This is a very unattractive word picture.

From what I understand many distributors here just do a big weekly dump of dvds to the retailers, like a job lot of whatever has been released, it's not like the retailers carefully select each and every item. Contrast that to having someone show up in person or call and email and I'm not surprised that the personal touch works.

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1. Location, Location, Location: The smut shops are back with a vengeance in the areas of NYC you canvassed. Sometimes two or three to a block which means high competition + most shops sell the same stuff. You walk in with something different. You make sales because on the one hand the merchant wants to be able to offer customers something the others don't have and therby gain a competitive edge. On the other hand the smut merchant can't afford not to sell something that his/her competitors accross the street and down the block already have stocked on their shelves.

2. You were your own distributor cutting out the added cost on both ends.

3. There's nothing like good old fashioned door-to-door sales. In addition to making that personal connection, you're very passionate about your product. If you're as persuasive in person as you are on this board, then I'd imagine that the merchants couldn't say no you and felt good about purchasing your product as something that has redeemable social value and is not ordered from a catalogue.

Edited by - alexander portnoy on 11/17/2006 8:28:41 AM

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Like I said, maybe it was phases of the moon, and not repeatable. But it's certainly worth looking for another stretch of fair whether and schlepping around the city again. I haven't even get into Eighth below 42nd yet.

But first M&K needs to get finished, which is what I'm doing right now!

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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Except no, fuck it, I don't feel like an asshole. Chelsea wasn't so much fun, but everywhere else I went, people were really nice. "New York premiere? Wow, congradulations!" or "Hey wait, is this porn?" "Yeah, kind of..." "Well this looks like porn I might actually like!"

Of course the money was nice too, and one of those radish carts would be perfect!

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"Mama, Mama, here comes the Porno Man!"

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In New York's fair city,
where the girls are so pretty,
I first set my eyes on determined Tony
As he wheel'd his wheel barrow
Thro' streets broad and narrow.

Crying, "Cocks, cunts, in movies alive, alive-o"
Alive, alive o, Alive, alive o
Crying, "Cocks, cunts, in movies alive, alive-o.

He was a pornmonger,
But sure 'twas no wonder,
For so he has said many times before,
And so he wheels his barrow
Thro' streets broad and narrow.

[Chorus]

He died of a fever
And no one could save him,
And that was the end of determined Tony
But his ghost posts his barrow,
Thro' forums broad and narrow.

[Repeat Chorus]

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p_n

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It almost makes me nostalgic for the old 42nd street with the hookers, pushers, hustlers and ne'er do wells who infused the city with a different kind of Tragic energy. This is not to romanticize urban poverty, but back then at least human suffering happened out in the open. Don't kid yourself, people are still suffering in spades but now thanks to Guiliani and Disney they've just been swept under the rug.

PS. TonyC, I think you should take your wares on the road, to city like San Francisco. It would be interesting to see what happens.

Edited by - alexander portnoy on 11/18/2006 8:47:29 AM

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Everywhere you turn, you hear "porn is more mainstream than ever, porn is more mainstream than ever", but what does that actually mean?

To wit: I think I remember Ernest Greene saying JENNA LOVES PAIN shipped 25,000 units, which is a great showing for a porn DVD. But hey wait. 25K?!? In music 25K is a minor hit for a minor band on a minor label. Jenna is the the porn world's Britney Spears, Madonna, and , U2, all rolled into one. How ever "mainstream" porn has become, if a Jenna title is only shipping 25K units, porn is still very much a fringe genre.

It makes me wonder: what's going on that Jenna's fame doesn't translate into bigger sales numbers? (or Joe Gallant's for that matter.) By and large, the general public seems more accepting than ever of the idea of sexually explicit entertainment, so it seems like there's a disconnect between the number of times Jenna's appeared in E! and the number of DVDs sold. Something seems out of whack.

But then what do I know, I'm just an asshole wandering the streets of New York.

Alive, alive-o! Alive alive-o!

Cocks, cunts, in movies alive, alive-o!

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

Edited by - TonyC on 11/18/2006 10:31:47 AM

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My guess for the 'lower' number on this title is not so much because porn is a fringe genre, but instead because the content/theme of 'Jenna Loves Pain' is a fringe genre...I'm not into BDSM and Fetish stuff, so this would go straight to the bottom of the pile for me, and I'm just wondering if a lot of Jenna's core audience weren't similarly predisposed on this one.

For example, would 'Jenna Loves Trannies' sell as much as most of her movies, or would it similarly be a turn off for the majority of her fanbase and the casual porn consumers as well? I tend to think the latter, as I for one would have no interest in buying it, and I'm pretty sure the average porn fan probably wouldn't either...

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Now suppose U2 put out an album, U2 LOVES KLEZMER for similar reasons; lets say they wanted to let every see the Yiddish side of U2. How many units do you think they'd ship? Do you think it would be more or less than 25K?

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Edited by - alexander portnoy on 11/18/2006 10:41:37 PM

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the fuck junkie ♠

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Those 25,000 copies may very well represent 500,000 to a million people watching the movie. I know at my local porn shop back in the vcr days lots and lots of movies were rented out way more than 20 times apeice. You could tell how often they were rented back then because they put a sticker on the plastic box they gave you the movie in. They wrote in pen the return date for movie on that sticker. You could count how many times the movie had been rented by looking at how many dates were written on the sticker. Often the stickers would be entirely filled and they would put a new one on.

One would think that DVDs would get even more use since they don't wear out as fast.

The other issue of course is peer to peer. The new generation, let's just call them "Generation Thief," basically doesn't pay for intellectual property. So while they may accept porn more than ever, that has no bearing on how many units move since they aren't paying a dime for any of it.

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I'm curious what the average weekly volume is for the industry as a whole in terms of units sold. 300,000 pieces maybe? That seems a bit high, even split among all the different studios. And then, how many of those units are bound for the rental market vs. straight purchase? And for the rentals, what is the average number of times a unit is rented? If you could get those numbers, you'd start to get an idea how big your market is. If I were running a studio, I would want similar metrics for each series that I produced. I'd have those numbers in a database cross-referenced with information like the director, cast list, boxcover model, etc.

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We tend to spend a lot of time talking about production and distribution, without focusing on another element of the problem, which is exhibition--that is, the retail display and availability of porn for the consumer. In many parts of the US at least, its hard to get the porn you want, or might enjoy at least, without being something of an expert. And having an online rental or sale outlet with your credit card on file. Or going into an adult store with a disguise to anonymously scope the shelves.

This in turn creates a lot of difficulty in figuring out just how "mainstream" porn really is, because there are so many obstacles put in the way of the average "mainstream" viewer, who is, probably by definition, a non-expert who doesn't want to swim great seas and climb high mountains to buy something he/she and/or his/her partner might like to watch. As a result, we can't really get any kind of handle on how and what kind of erotica might sell if it were placed in a non-threatening way at the "mainstream" audiences' fingertips. For example, if the aforementioned Jenna movie were available in the average American big box outlet, how many copies would it sell then? Still 25k? Or 250k? Hard to say, really. But consider the impact on the adult "system" if this happened.

What I'm suggesting is that flawed and obstructed product delivery makes audience size and type hard to define. Perhaps if we examined the number of adult cable buyers in the marketplace, we would get a somewhat better idea, since that is the easiest, most anonymous delivery system available at the moment. Of course, there are probably a lot of people who watch that stuff, laugh, scream, or just nod off, and give up on the genre completely.

TC's experiences are important however, because he has begun to feel out an alternative audience for erotica, and outlets to show explicit films that haven't been exploited as much as maybe they should be (I don't mean the shops in NYC--but some of the media and exhibition locations which have embraced his work). On the other hand, we should remember that this "alt sex" crowd is also pretty sophisticated in their interests. "Mainstream porn" seems to indicate something more contradictory and repressed to me, where we talk about it all day but never admit to seeing it, where the menu is memorized but the entrées never tasted. And you wonder why men whack off to Max Hardcore.

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Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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For some of my customers I've established (sadly I didn't invented it ) a new system of outlets, parallel to the existing brick-and-mortal and/or on-line retail chains (mostly known to the 'converted' audience only). These new 'outlets' work like window-shop merchandising: sound-systems, turn-key, set-up in restaurants / museum / music schools / conference centers and alike, with full brand-name / sales-outlet referencing (including brochures). It's a hit everywhere; pointing out the availability of goods, opening up discussions; retailer- and brand recognition up, and eventually sales up too. On a mainly new / alternative audience.

I think hitting the road, meeting new potential-customers in "Korean nail salons, Arab bodegas, Starbucks", everywhere , as Tony wrote, is a perfect way to broaden your audience- and/or customer base. Just get things started by going through 'F5 and log-in' (refresh and action). Unless porn is like a different universe marketing-wise, of course ...

p_n

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I'd like to hear back after you do finally contact "Hustler" about carrying your titles.

Also do you have a table at conventions besides the AEE in Vegas? Such as Miami Erotic Exotic Expo, The Tampa Show etc.

Edited by - mrbluelouboyle on 11/24/2006 8:46:20 AM

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