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Amazon is a great place to buy your DVD's and books but for a seller it may be quite expensive as you would spend more money on the shipping to the Amazon than the cost of making the DVD. You have to understand that Amazon or any other online retailer works similar to a physical store and it will want to keep only very limited stock of any single item.
Amazon.com offers Advantage program that allows anybody with a book or DVD (with IBAN or UPC code) to sell it through Amazon. You simply send the DVD(s) to Amazon and they will send it to the customer, charge their credit card and charge taxes where they need to be charged.
The Amazon will take (as most of other retailers) about 50-55% from the retail price.
The major problem with a low volume sales is that any, even small additional cost bite quite a nasty chunk from the already low wholesale price. Because Amazon Advantage is a retail, you will be sending one or two DVD's at a time to their warehouse. The shipping cost and the slow sales because of the shipping detail could be a serious drawback. A good idea is to at least save any boxes that come from Amazon (ask friends) and reuse them to ship your DVD's to them. They will throw away the packaging, then re-pack it in their own box. Amazon will also return any defective items at your expense so you have to pack it properly.
For Canadian authors, the Amazon.ca doesn't even try to become a secondary distributor like the Advantage program. (because of the low volume sales) To list a new item you have to first work with other Canadian distributors: Pindoff Record Sales or Video One. When we got reply from Pindoff, it become obvious that they are themselves a secondary distributors and they purchase DVDs from their list of other bigger distributors and so they can't take our DVD directly.
Even the Amazon is a premier online seller it is obvious that the retail is still the major player in most distribution including entertainment (especially in smaller markets). The online store is just a branch connected to the whole retail backbone. This is a fact that may not be clear right away because of the online hype.
Amazon.UK has also their own Advantage program, but obviously shipping items to UK warehouse (on your own expense) from US cost more than you ever get by the sale of it. And of course there is this peculiar problem with the three letters PAL that seems to be favored more in that country far, far away.
 As you may know the show was all written, filmed, produced and manufactured in Canada so after all the troubles to contact a Canadian distributor and their distributors-distributors (contacting is the easy part, getting any reply is the problem) we started toying with the idea that maybe we should put a "Not available for sale in Canada" sign on the packaging (with the maple leaf of course).
Or maybe we should claim the DVD is actually banned in Canada (It seems logical, why else would no Canadian distributor carry it?) and encourage Canadians to get it through the dangerous gray market channels from the free United States (smuggle it over border to Canada disguised as a box of two very thin waffles) because we believe in a free speech and TV! Hopefully we will fix this Canadian problem by applying more legwork and phone(y)-work. Or maybe it just needs more money?
If not, we can still print our Banned in Canada stickers.
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