Of course, there's a catch: In exchange for handling duplication, authoring, warehousing, fulfillment, customer service and the web storefront, CreateSpace takes a cut from every sale (just like traditional distributors do, though with much less risk on your part). It takes a flat $4.95 off the top of every DVD that you sell, plus anywhere from 15% to 45% of the cover price of your DVD (depending on whether your product is listed on your own storefront or on Amazon.com.)

Let's say you're selling a $20 DVD and choose to list it on Amazon.com. If someone buys a copy from Amazon, CreateSpace takes $4.95 + 45% of $20, or $13.95, leaving you with $6.05 from the sale of your own movie. Selling it on your own CreateSpace storefront is significantly cheaper, netting you $12.05.

Whether or not taking that sort of hit to your bottom line is acceptable is something you're going to have to answer for yourself. 45% + $4.95 is a lot of money, but doing your own duplication and fulfillment is a lot of work.

While CreateSpace may be a major player in the market, it isn't alone. Sites likeLulu.com offer a very similar range of services, and the competition is starting to heat up. It's to your advantage to do the math, read some independent testimonials and see what makes the most sense for you.

No matter how your individual numbers come out, CreateSpace and its ilk give independent video producers seeking sales channels an exciting new option, and having options is never a bad thing.

Mike VanHelder is an IT professional with a sideline in film production and a great love for Italian zombie movies.

The Long Tail theory popped up various times on the internet prior to Chris Anderson's making it largely popular in the October 2004 issue of Wired Magazine. Long Tail refers to the business model used by online media retailers like Amazon or Netflix. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, which have a limited amount of room to display and sell products and must therefore pick only the biggest sellers for their shelves, online retailers can afford to carry an extremely wide inventory of products. They may not sell many copies of the more obscure films, but they have more small, obscure films (the yellow portion of the graph, called the long tail) than blockbusters (the green portion of the graph, called the short head).

Think of it this way: A movie like Star Wars may sell a hundred times better than, say, Alien Zombie Invasion IV, but, for every Star Wars out there, there are a hundred small movies like Alien Zombie Invasion. Amazon's bread and butter is selling one or two copies of each of those hundred small movies, rather than relying on Star Wars to carry its bottom line. That's why it's interested in carrying tiny films by independent filmmakers, and why the CreateSpace program makes sense for it.