Trying to decide what to do with the many DVDs in my possession has resulted in an odd dilemma. What do I do with all of them once I’ve watched them? Of course, everyone has “keepers” that they would never get rid of. It’s not the obvious keepers that are causing me pause – it’s the ones that fall into the gray zones between “I’ll watch it again” and “it’s just gonna sit there and collect dust but I might want to watch it again someday” that I’m talking about. This issue seems to come up a lot (see my recent dilemma over what to do with my copy of The Tudors) and it even affects simple things like managing what little space I have available to house all of my accumulated treasures! The answer is to swap them at SwapaDVD, but the question of when and which ones to swap remains the same.
I think I’ve decided to keep the items that I can’t readily replace – even if there’s little possibility that I’ll watch them again any time soon. While I’ve been very lucky to pick up a number of out of print DVDs at SwapaDVD, I don’t kid myself that lightening would strike twice and that I’d be able to get the same titles again very readily. First, because there are other collectors who have the same titles on their wish lists and I’ll be forced to wait in line to get a replacement (that’s fair). Second, because these titles are out of print, they often command stupid-expensive pricing on the secondary used market (as a buyer I call the high prices stupid, if I were the seller I’d call it fair market value)!
I watch a lot of non-fiction. Documentaries, biographies, performance art, you name it – I watch it. A lot of this sort of thing is only produced in small numbers – it’s never expected to appeal to the masses so their production runs tend to be quite small. Some houses, such as A&E/History Channel only issues certain titles based on demand. This is literally a print-on-demand scenario where they will tell you up front that your order will take longer to fill because they physically have to manufacture the DVD to fill your order. If you were to go their website, a great many of their titles are noted this way. Of course, you’re usually forced to pay the full price of $25 for these titles, unless they decide to run a special and produce a bunch of them in advance. They did this recently with their Modern Marvels series and offered them as a BOGO free deal.
There are many titles that I have on hand that I could easily re-acquire from SwapaDVD. These include almost any major block-buster film produced in the last 10 years (with the notable exception of many Disney titles) as well as the majority of films that have been re-released from VHS to DVD. Again, there will be exceptions as copies of Where the Red Fern Grows can be a challenge to locate at reasonable expense (it is out of print again). Incidentally, I picked up 2 pristine used copies of it through SwapaDVD before Christmas even though I had to go through the line on the wish list twice. One was a Christmas gift for my nieces in Minnesota, the other was destined to be the “house” copy. As I write this post, there are 10 people waiting to get a copy. Even though no copies have been offered in the last 10 days, I feel certain that these folks will get an opportunity to order the movie within the next few months or so as they are offered for swap fairly regularly.
From what I can tell, a lot of the folks who regularly post to the discussion boards at SwapaDVD are old-timers from the PaperBackSwap site. Allow let me say that I enjoy and use both sites and respect the communities at both very highly. But it seems to me that there’s a very different mentality about DVDs in play than there is concerning books. Most people don’t read the same book more than once. Yes, yes, of course each person has exceptions and I myself have a collection of books that I could never do without, regardless of whether I ever read them again or not. However, movies are entirely different. People will watch the same thing over and over again. People will keep movies in their house because they have a perception that an un-named “someone” in the house may want to see it again. Watching movies is an almost universal past-time in our culture, where reading is not. I know a lot of people who don’t read recreationaly, but those same people often borrow DVDs from my collection.
So what does this mean? To me, it means that a typical used book at PaperBackSwap will be swapped from one member to another repeatedly where as the typical used DVD will be swapped a lot less frequently. The reason for this is that the typical reader, once finished with a book, is truly finished with it. Often there is no one else in that reader’s every day world who might be interested in reading it, and if that is the case, that book will be posted back into the swap system fairly soon (unless that person has accumulated so many books that they are buried under their “to be read” pile). We treat DVDs differently. We assign many of them an intangible “potential” for further personal use that may or may not ever come to fruition. Because of this, DVDs that have been swapped will return to the swap system far less frequently – if ever. The danger here is that SwapaDVD, unless they undertake some creative marketing efforts, runs the risk that the site will become somewhat “stale” for their members over the long run. One will likely always be able to find a copy of Charlie’s Angels on the site - but without the constant influx of a healthy percentage of new users, those more esoteric, hard to find or out of print titles, such as Where the Red Fern Grows, that make a member cry with joy when successfully swapped, will become fewer and further between.
To illustrate my point, I’d like to refer back to what I’ve come to call the “honeymoon” period of membership at SwapaDVD. I joined on November 14th and had the opportunity to place some items on my wish list before the site went public on November 27th. When that happened, it was like the flood gates opened! All of a sudden, I was spending credits like they were going out of style! Members were reporting that they were getting 3 to 5 items off their wish lists each day! I must tell you, it was heavenly though it only lasted a few weeks. Of course, we were benefiting just because we got there first and it would be folly to try to re-create that sort of activity again. However, I think that the site would benefit from some judicious marketing efforts. I’ve seen the great press releases about SwapaDVD but I’m hoping to see the developers invest a little money in the site as soon as they have the opportunity to increase public awareness. Something like 34 million DVD players were sold last year. Can you imagine how many DVDs must have been sold??! It would be simpler to attempt to count the number of households that don’t own DVDs than those who do. I really think that the site has enormous potential and right now, the sky is the limit. So really, what I’m saying is that one of you REALLY needs to call Oprah so she can make SwapaDVD one of her “favorite things” too! Then of course, the rest of the world will follow. (Actually, I’m really kind of serious!)
