You're in a tough situation. I highly recommend "the Insider's Guide to Releasing Independent Movies" by Stacy (Stacey?) Parks. Low budget movies and even movies approaching 1 million dollars in budget have become mere commodities that are sold in bulk for less and less. The supply & demand situation is really bleak due to low cost / high quality video equipment that has become available (ever since the Canon XL-1), and illegal file sharing doesn't help much either. Over 4,000 movies are made every year! A sales rep may be right for one project but wrong for another. One thing I learned in this book I suggested is that 90% of independent filmmakers make NOTHING off of foreign sales because of the costs absorbed by the sales rep. You make your money off of domestic sales. If your domestic sales rep never (via a distributor) gets your movie into stores (like Best Buy and Blockbuster) or into those stores in great numbers then you are pissing away 25% of your Internet sales to that sales rep.
If you can do your own manufacturing then I highly suggest that you RETAIN the right to sell your DVD via your movie home page and via Amazon. If a distributor has a big problem with that then that tells me that they really only expect to sell most of your DVD's via Amazon. They are looking for a free lunch (your Internet sales) and they really don't have the ability to sell your movie in stores with any kind of impact.
