Four businesses that already have their raw material.
A brand people will pay to put on things, five books that already sell, a readership of tens of millions with nowhere to read anything, and a television format that works in any country with fields in it. All four are downstream of a programme that already exists.
The four.
Licensing
Putting the name on somebody else’s product, and the rules that stop it becoming a car boot sale.
The imprint
Five books have already sold. The question is whether the next twenty are somebody else’s or ours.
The magazine
A quarterly that people keep, and a website that pays for it. In that order, not the other way round.
The format
The idea travels better than the person does, and that is the entire argument for selling it.
The four, compared.
| Business | What it needs | What it earns | The main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing | A rights team and the discipline to say no | Royalty, typically 5–12 per cent of wholesale | Dilution. Every licence makes the next one slightly less valuable |
| The imprint | An editor, a distributor, and patience | A larger share of a smaller list | Publishing is hard and the existing publisher is good at it |
| The magazine | A staff of four to six, and a printer | Subscription, plus advertising it does not depend on | Print economics, which are unforgiving and well documented |
| The format | A format agent and an existing producer’s cooperation | A format fee and a per-episode royalty | It is not ours to sell. The rights sit with the production companies and Amazon |
Why these four and not thirty.
Because each of them uses something the estate already has rather than something it would have to build. A brand people recognise, an audience that already buys books, a readership with nowhere to read, and a format that is already proven in one country.
The test applied to every media idea in the audit was whether it needed a new audience. Anything that did was rejected, because acquiring an audience is the expensive part and this estate’s single unusual asset is that it has already done it.
The four that survive are all, in different ways, the same business: taking attention that already exists and attaching a margin to it. That is not a criticism. It is the only thing media businesses have ever done.
Four businesses, one line each.
Licensing
Royalty on somebody else’s manufacturing.
The imprint
A bigger share of a smaller list.
The magazine
A thing people keep.
The format
The idea travels; the person does not.
The media businesses, questioned.
None of them. This is an unofficial demonstration build. The books and the programme are real and belong to other people; these four pages describe businesses that do not exist.
Because it is the only one of the four that is not the estate’s to sell. The television rights sit with the production companies and Amazon, and no format sale happens without them.
Start with licensing.
Royalty rates, categories, and the discipline that stops it becoming a car boot sale.
First sight of every drop
The things that sell out do it in minutes. This is the only warning anyone gets.
