(2009-11-16) Wenger Content Capital

Albert Wenger had an interesting post on the idea of "ContentCapital" (kinda like Venture Capital) for Book Publishing. Probably based around a tiny corporation (Virtual Company) whose main assets are some amount of Intellectual Property by an author, and the author's time. A way of (possibly) providing a Living Wage advance to the writer, and Marketing for the property, then sharing revenue. Bringing together multiple revenue streams is important. But would an author most-often end up with a single relationship/SmallCo to cover his whole output/life, or a series of single-work-specific ventures? If the former case, and the 1st work doesn't do super-well, is there going to really be any money to continue to pay the creator to work on objet2? Conversely, if each work has its own fund, then do 2 funds end up competing for the same creator's time (for different purposes supporting different stages of the respective objects Life Cycle)? Seems like almost a form of Patronage with a possible payback (like a Broad Way play - so the creator really wants to sell 200%).

If you were just focused on the financial payback (rather than emotional benefit), would you need a big Portfolio to catch the low-odds Big Hit/Home Run? Meaning you'd need the scale of a, uh, Publisher? Or a Venture Capitalist - like the kinda willing to do early-stage Lean Startup funding (so that you do a larger number of small deals than a typical VC - raising scale issues like in Makers with New Work).

Some good comments in the thread.