Why Superstars Make All The Money

Howdy Storytellers 🤠,

Happy Sunday! I nerded out this weekend. There’s a massive opportunity right now in storytelling (and it has nothing to do with AI… well kind of 😉).

I’ve been helping our first shows launch on the Creatorwood Streaming Platform, working with the team to build out some awesome systems and features that can help every show every published on Creatorwood sell more and reach more viewers (the how behind that is an article for another day).

A few things have blown my mind…

This isn’t just true for marketing shows on Creatorwood.

This is true for everything in storytelling.

Small improvements often lead to massive changes in outcomes.

First, I want to share why this is. Then, I’ll give you a simple system for helping you make any story better (and by proxy have your viewership grow much faster).

Let’s dive in…

One economic principle rules publishing, film, and all of entertainment.

Once you understand it, you can master it – and mastering it is what separates the blockbusters and bestsellers from everything else.

It’s called the Superstar Effect. The idea is simple: in industries where there is imperfect substitution (two products are not the exactly the same) consumers want the best AND when an industry also has zero-marginal cost to produce more of said product — the best products win a majority of the market.

Let’s break that down in the context of storytelling (books, films, games, etc.):

What this means is simple: the “best” movies, shows, books (any media format) end up making the vast vast majority of the money.

The frustrating part? The amount of money they make is nowhere near proportional to how much better customers perceive these movies to be (it is often times more proportional to how much cash they have to pay the already incumbent superstar actors and individuals to participate in their film).

Likewise “better” and “best” are by nature subjective terms. What makes a film better or even the best? There’s much debate in film critic circles.

For our sake here, “better” and “best” will be replaced by a story that is more engaging. You can actually measure engagement (i.e. when people stop watching a film after starting) and at MrBeast (I helped lead their strategy team) this was the #1 metric we cared about. Making a better story? That sounds great! But hard to measure.

Creating a more engaging story? We can measure that (and therefore work toward improving our engagement, I discuss that in detail here).

A story that 30% of people make it 10 minutes in (pretty engaging!) may make $1,000. A story that 50% of people make it 10 minutes in (more engaging!) may make $100,000. The person who made it did not create a 100x more engaging story. Instead, due to the Superstar Effect detailed above, they garner an outsized reward.

And the story featuring the A-List Actor may make $10 million but is less engaging than both stories above (you just had to pay them $7 million to be in it). SEQUEL 25,000 anyone????

You might then think… due to the Superstar Effect why don’t a handful of stories make all of the money?

In film this is largely true. 12 - 33 movies make up half the annual box office in the U.S. (depending on the year).

It’s almost hard to comprehend how nuts that is.

Out of all of the movies made by big and small studios, out of all of the scripts written in a given year, 12 - 33 movies make up half the revenue.

This sounds extremely depressing.

But I have a beacon of hope for you.

No, the long tail effect has nothing to do with dogs with long tails (although I really just wanted an excuse to share a picture of a dog with a long tail surfing… dogs surfing is adorable btw and a real sport!).

The Long Tail Effect is simple. As distribution costs lower tastes are allowed to diversify.

No limited number broadcast channels anymore. No limited shelf space.

As tastes diversify, instead of concentrating on a few global superstars, consumers crowd toward “niche superstars”. Thus the Superstar Effect and Long Tail Effect in tandem explain why we see many Power Laws present (where few titles make the majority of the revenue)

These niche superstars are where the greatest opportunity in storytelling (ever) is. And it’s going to break the high-cost production model of Hollywood (spoiler alert… diversifying viewer tastes have already been doing this!).

We have already seen this in indie publishing.

Now the same will happen for film with the cost of creation dramatically decreasing with AI (our VIP Production Team can make a movie or show for you for just $250 per finished minute, learn more here). Think of how many genres don’t even have a movie or show that exists in them? You could be the first film in your entire category… the only one for people with similar tastes as you.

But the big question comes in… just how do I know I made a story tuned to a specific audience’s taste? Inside my Story Gap article I discuss how to identify potential niche audiences easily.

Now I’m going to share with you how to make something amazing for them.

The amazing (at least in my opinion cause I’m such a geek about this) part of storytelling is that engagement can be measured.

You don’t need my opinion if your story is engaging or not. You don’t need your partner’s (I hope they are supportive, if not I’ll send them this shirt)

The viewer’s experience is what matters. YOUR specific viewers in your specific audience (which you can nail down with my story gap article).

You gather your viewer’s opinion by looking at the engagement data. How often do viewers start watching my film? And when do they decide to stop watching? These are the only questions that matter.

On the Creatorwood Streaming Platform we give data to every storyteller on exactly when viewers stop watching their films.

We also give data to every storyteller on how many go to their show landing page and the % who start watching and buy the film.

Inside of these data points is immense power. You don’t need to let viewer data rule your life as a storyteller. You just have to pay attention to it in 3 key moments.

Try to improve your show cover and description to increase the rate at which people buy your show from the landing page. Trailers can help too, but it’s much faster and more impactful to change your show cover and description. Small changes in framing for your logline and cover can yield large conversion difference in your target audience.

The beginning of your film is everything. Once a viewer is hooked they are very likely to keep watching. Instead of optimizing minutes 10 - 100 of your movie or episodes 2 - 10, focus on the beginning.

If people are dropping off, you can (especially with AI now) create a new version of the beginning of your film. For VIP Production clients who commit to projects above 60 minutes (whether a show or movie) we are happy to go back to the first 10 minutes (if retention is low) and re-produce it. Pending on scope we can do this for very little charge or at no charge (per our VIP Production Client Terms). It just depends on the request, but typically small changes here (sometimes even adding a few key shots) can lead to a massive difference.

Often times this a strategic question. Make movies and shows in series (much higher likelihood people will want to continue watching). AND make the covers and descriptions for those next movies and shows strong (and you can change this easily too!).

Of course you do not have to create stories in series. The benefit to doing so is you’ll make more money on average per viewer without having to go out and market and find new viewers to generate that revenue – a huge bonus!

By focusing on improving your 3 viewer bottlenecks, you can make your film more engaging measurably for your audience.

Most importantly, in a world of many niches and subgenres, being the most engaging (at the 3 things above) for your specific audience will lead to you “winning” your niche (cause the Superstar effect is still present in each genre 😊). AND this starts well before your viewer even watches your film – and is often times about adjusting WHO your film is for in your marketing and how you communicate it to them (aka the poster/cover and description of your story).

I hope this is helpful.

Let me know any questions you have.

I’m so excited and inspired by the stories you are creating. For now, using the Movie Machine by yourself is closed (for new creators) until we make our own technology better. In the meantime, if you want to make your movie or show with us, you can have a team of professional AI Directors make your movie, trailer, or show for you (saving you endless time and stress). You can learn more about VIP Production HERE.

And as always don’t forget…