As someone married to a retailer, if Kernes figure of $900 million to $1 billion going to porn production companies then the $4 billion figure may not be far off.
Figure it this way. If there were 13,500 videos produced last year, that works out to sales to the production company of $68,100. If you figure that some tapes go bust and make squat while a Tera or Jenna tape might sell a couple hundred grand at wholesale costs, that doesn’t seem that far off to me.
Then, when you add in the middlemen that are traditionally in the retail supply chain (I don’t know about porn, but traditional retail distributors make 15% to 25%; a retailer doubles the cost it pays the distributor or manufacturer; there’s transportation costs); and factor that some of that is rentals, where a retailer may get more bang for their wholesale dollar rather than just selling it outright; the numbers still seem a little high, but not outer space high.
PS — my guess as to who’s getting screwed out of money in porn is the talent.Trust me…It’s us Directors…
Devon Michaels Writes:
HEY baby— just wanted to clarify something— while you may not like her name— she didn’t choose the name for porn. Tylene Buck was a pretty big fitness model in the mid-late nineties. She and I appeared in several issues of Musclemag and Pump together, and shot for Ironman out in Death Valley together back in 99. she’s in the Feb2000 issue of Ironman— I’m on the cover and we each have about 4-5 pages in that issue– a swimsuit issue— including one together. The wrestling came after fitness modeling. Haven’t seen her for years, but at least back then she was a total sweetheart. She should do well in adult.
