Hey Authors, Filmmakers, & Musicians, Distribution Isn't The Issue!

The digital revolution of the past 25 years has solved distribution.

You can get your movie into a theater.

You can get your video on a platform with 2.7 billion daily viewers.

You can get your book in front of 180 million subscribers on the largest content and shopping marketplace in the world.

You can get your song onto a platform with 670 million active monthly users.

You can get your app into the largest app stores — alongside 4 million others — with some code and a $99 annual fee.

Distribution is no longer the barrier.

DIY platforms, aggregators, and free or low-cost publishing tools have democratized access. Today, any movie, book, or song — no matter how good or bad — can be made available to a global audience.

Generally speaking, there are three phases of content:

• The production.

• The distribution.

• The marketing.

Or to say it more plainly:

• To make.

• To make available.

• To make known.

If you’ve been awake (and alive) for the past 25 years, you know content creation has exploded in all forms and formats. There’s a reason Seth Godin, even 15 years ago, called it “the most cluttered marketplace in history.” The “clutter” of 2010 looks minimal compared to today’s flood of Substacks, podcasts, memes, books, videos, films, songs, series, essays, poems, illustrations, photographs, and articles pushed to our devices every day.

Just a few examples:

• The Sundance Film Festival recently received 15,775 submissions — for about 80 feature slots.

• 30 new videos are uploaded to YouTube every second.

• 27 million new podcast episodes are published each year.

• 1.4 million new self-published books appear on Amazon annually.

• 103,000 new tracks are added to Spotify every day.

The volume has skyrocketed — and I’d argue, so has the quality. More creators, more competition, more tools, more platforms, and more opportunity has pushed the bar higher. We're not just seeing more — we're seeing better.

So if creating is not the problem…

And distribution is no longer the obstacle…

What’s the issue?

Marketing.

Specifically: how to move distracted, disinterested, busy, passive, and overwhelmed audiences (ourselves included) from awareness to action … from passivity to participation … from a thousand options to a single choice.

A friend put it perfectly, after finishing his book — having previously worked as a musician and filmmaker:

“In music, I ask the audience for two minutes.”
“In film, I ask the audience for two hours.”
“In writing a book, I’m asking the audience for two weeks.”

Time and attention, not dollars and cents, are now the biggest hurdles for content consumption.

Movie theaters aren't competing with each other — they're competing with every form of entertainment that doesn’t require you to sit still, in one spot, for two hours, with your phone off. The problem isn’t the price of a movie — it’s the cost of asking for uninterrupted attention in a distracted world.

That’s why marketing — including promotion, publicity, social media, design, stunts, partnerships, and press — has become the real battleground.

It’s not enough to be good — you have to be seen.

It’s not enough to be available — you have to be unavoidable.

Because in today’s attention economy, where algorithms are the gatekeepers and virality often substitutes for value, success hinges less on how well something is made, and more on whether anyone cares enough to click … and then watch, read, listen, or share.

Here’s the hard truth: most won’t.

Not because your work isn’t good enough — but because they don’t know it exists.

So the real question isn’t just how you market — it’s when you start thinking about it.

Too many creators treat marketing like the final step. Good Lord, the times I’ve been in a meeting where the film, book, or series is done, and someone says: “Okay, so how are we going to roll this to the audience?”

By then, it’s too late.

Marketing as an afterthought is dangerous. Because if you don’t shape the why and the who early, you’re left scrambling to make the right people care — and quickly.

Here’s the one principle every creator needs to hear: marketing begins on DAY ONE.

In scripting.
In the studio.
In the draft.
On the set.
As early as possible.

Marketing needs to be baked into the DNA of the project. Beginning with these questions:

• Who is this for?

• How big is this audience?

• Where are they and how do we reach them?

• Why should they care?

• What do they already believe?

• How does this project reinforce or challenge those beliefs?

• What story are we telling — not just in the content, but around it?

• What do we want them to do/feel/believe?

• How do we catch them and keep them as part of our world and work?

These aren’t post-launch questions — they’re foundational.

Because in a world where everyone can create and distribute, it takes more than money. It takes strategy.

Too many creators operate with a “READY. FIRE. AIM.” approach — and hope something sticks.

As one former colleague says, most just “spray and pray.”

Marketing isn’t a department anymore. It’s a discipline.

And in 2025, more and more audiences want “smart with heart.” No tricks. No more noise. No more games.

The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all.
It feels like relevance.
It feels like resonance.
It feels like relationship.

It’s about understanding people deeply — and connecting your work to their hopes, longings, fears, aspirations, and convictions.

That’s the standard.

So yes — the digital revolution solved distribution.

But in doing so, it made marketing the most critical skill of the modern creator.

To make.
To make available.
To make known.

It’s the third act that will determine whether your creative work breaks free and breaks out.