One thing I found extremely interesting when I just googled this is how much more money there is in book sales on a per unit basis. The idea of clearing even a dollar per view on a movie is so intriguing. If that were the case making millions would be easy. With movies, most of the growth is in AVOD platforms where anyone can go and watch the movie for free and the filmmaker basically shares a smaller percentage of the ad revenue generated by the commercials you must watch. It's a similar model to how YouTube channels make money. There simply isn't a way for a book to be distributed in the same way. Where anyone can go read it and the author shares in ad revenue. Very interesting.
The closest is Kindle Unlimited, where the author gets a slice of the payout pool based on number of pages read.
For authors doing well in it, it can be 65% of their income, even though it's way less for a full read than a sale.
So let's say an author had a series of books in very long form that weren't really knocking any doors down in terms of earnings, but the writing was solid and the characters spanned the entire series. I would think that producing one movie with those characters would cause that authors sales to explode, if say the film achieved a million views. BTW getting a million views is not that hard at all. You are saying that such an author would never have the ability to fund the film.
We don't know how many views our books get unless you're doing ads, and that reporting is unreliable anyway.
Views of everything is misleading. Something gets put into my feed, and I can't help but see it, even when totally not interested, and it gets registered as a view. Very misleading.
But here's the huge question I have.
Would such an author be willing to sell a percentage of their library outright if I was able to find an investor for the film? Would an author be willing to say, my books have been earning an average of $1,000 per month. Mr. film producer, if you fund the film and my sales increase to $5,000 per month, I'll split the increased sales with you.
Hold the bus!
$1000 a month for one book is the realm of new releases, which do that once in their entire life.
Most books more than 3 months old are doing less than $100 a month, even if they did that $1000 in the first month. $100 a month after the first 3 months is doing extremely well.
6 figure authors mainly make their money from new releases, and the steady increase in the back catalogue which is all making 10c to $100 a month. And most of that would be Kindle Unlimited reads.
Where I'm going with my thinking here is that I would bet that the increase in book sales will be way more profitable than the underlining film simply because the film would promote the entire series of books. I assume that once a reader reads one book in the series they are way more likely to read the rest correct?. The film will most certainly find a much larger audience, but in general the film will make about a nickel every time someone watches it, while the books will earn way more.
No-one is going to thank you for making a movie from book 1, and then not doing the rest of the series. If anything, that will blow back on the author really badly.
If you're doing book 1, then you need to do the entire series. Doing book 1 as an ad will just infuriate people.
Your math doesn't math. A sale can generate $2-3 for an author, while a full read in KU generated $1.25. (On a 250 page book properly priced.)
But the number of sales/full read at that is going to be less than 3000 in a year. So your nickle on a view with over a million views is probably going to be much more lucrative.
The thing is though, that 'million views' is hardly guaranteed. Nothing to do with books is.
Just thinking out loud here, but I'm certain that if anyone here has a series of books with the same characters and is interested in some kind of deal I outlined above, I'm certain I can get the film funded.
I seriously doubt that. It it was possible, it would be happening all the time now. It's not.
And as I said with series, you either do the entire series, or you don't do it at all. Because people are fed up with tv and movie series that never get completed.
Would such an author be willing to sell a percentage of their library outright if I was able to find an investor for the film? Would an author be willing to say, my books have been earning an average of $1,000 per month. Mr. film producer, if you fund the film and my sales increase to $5,000 per month, I'll split the increased sales with you.
Where's the evidence that this sort of thing is even possible on a small Indie film?
There would need to be actual documentation somewhere on multiple books turned into Indie movies where the movie flowed back into the books. And that would also need to show the instances where it didn't.
Otherwise, it's just speculation as to possibilities.
How long does that split of sales run for? A movie is only going to have a single viewing spike like a book does, and once that's over, unless something happens to spike again, the book will return to it's previous level, or lower, and at that point, you don't want to be still splitting it.
One would need to see the wording of a contract to even consider that.
Honestly, that 1 to 5 k increase will only last a short time, and then the book returns to normal. If it lasts for 3 months, then you're splitting 4k for 3 months, giving you 6k return, but that will be receding anyway. On a 25-50k investment, that's not a good result.
This only works if the viewership is constant for a long period.
The other factor is conversion rate. What percent of that million views is even going to finish watching it, let alone check out the book? 1%?
We know from social media followings that if if you can get 1% of your following ordering your pre-order, then you're doing better than most.
So a million views is how many book views? We don't know.
Example, I enjoyed Ready Player One. I didn't read the book. And that was a blockbuster movie, not a minor funded Indie.
