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Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

#41

Post by gumby »

This is quite brilliant, and also instructive. They saw a corner case and took advantage of it.*

But when you're starting a company this is a danger: you might get some initial traction but is your growth all in a corner case? This is almost a restatement of the "early adopter" cohort in "Crossing the Chasm".

Dominating a niche isn't alway bad BTW -- FB's niche was college students, who could evangelize and grow the overall market.... though notice that FB is pretty much nonexistent in that niche today.

* I mean this in a good sense: "exploit" and "take advantage of" often imply something shady.

Re: Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

#44

Post by leoc »

One vaguely related thing is the 1953 jukebox hit, "Three Minutes of Silence" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3OSg2ehHbs which delivered on its promise. (It doesn't seem to have a WP page yet. Does anyone know of a WP-friendly source of information on it?)

Here's a Spotify playlist of various (apparently) silent tracks, useful for inserting pauses/silent intervals into Spotify playlists as (AFAICT) there isn't any other way to do so. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fN5YP4n8aGCSS4j3MQoeo?si=... .

Re: Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

#46

Post by sgp_ »

I spoke with Eric a few months ago to help give a few pointers when he was considering the idea for this movie. He saw some of the media surrounding "Monero Means Money," our film that we put together from idea to theaters in a week. I explained how I cold called theaters who were very willing to show unusual movies at this time while they have essentially no revenue.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgewky/how-a-random-guy-m...

For us, getting a movie on the charts was more of a logistics challenge than anything, and I assume it was the same for him. Congrats to Eric and everyone else involved for topping the charts!

Re: Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

#48

Post by netcan »

floren wrote: post #17
teach wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "participated" in a less nefarious strategy. In 2010, when the collection of short stories "Machine of Death" was about to be released, the editor Ryan North asked us not to pre-order. Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day, which certainly led to increased sales over time. Probably didn't hurt that it…

I was just listening to a podcast that included Steve Rinella lamenting that his recent wild game cookbook didn't make the NYT Best Seller list despite selling out on Amazon... If I remember correctly, it was precisely because of pre-orders. Thus, as he prepares to release his latest book, he's asking fans to buy the book, but to try and mix it up from just Amazon pre-ordering: pre-order at independent bookstores, or…

SEO everywhere.

This is all getting to be too much.

Re: Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

#49

Post by ycombinete »

scubbo wrote: post #8
teach wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "participated" in a less nefarious strategy. In 2010, when the collection of short stories "Machine of Death" was about to be released, the editor Ryan North asked us not to pre-order. Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day, which certainly led to increased sales over time. Probably didn't hurt that it…

> Ryan North is also the author of the popular webcomic "Dinosaur Comic". And of "To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure" and "Romeo And/Or Juliet", CYA retellings of Hamlet and R&J; and of "How To Invent Everything", a handy-dandy guide to bootstrapping modern technology if your time machine malfunctions. AND he is the human of Noam Chompsky, a Very Good Boy.

For anyone else confused by this last sentence. North’s dog is named after Noam Chomsky.

Re: Unsubscribe: The $0-budget movie that ‘topped the US box office’

#50

Post by ashtonkem »

floren wrote: post #17
teach wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "participated" in a less nefarious strategy. In 2010, when the collection of short stories "Machine of Death" was about to be released, the editor Ryan North asked us not to pre-order. Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day, which certainly led to increased sales over time. Probably didn't hurt that it…

I was just listening to a podcast that included Steve Rinella lamenting that his recent wild game cookbook didn't make the NYT Best Seller list despite selling out on Amazon... If I remember correctly, it was precisely because of pre-orders. Thus, as he prepares to release his latest book, he's asking fans to buy the book, but to try and mix it up from just Amazon pre-ordering: pre-order at independent bookstores, or…

Mike Duncan said that the minimum preorder volume to get on the NYT best seller’s list is somewhere near 5,000.
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