The Problem:
Even most interesting people don’t have biographies because the books won’t sell. If the money wasn’t an issue, everyone would want a biography about him/herself.
The Business
Write biographies of people.
The payment comes from the subject of the book. The subject pays for their own biography to be written.
The fee would need to be large. $25K? $50K? $100K?
Doableness
You need excellent writers. You also need a process that works. There needs to be an underlying formula, but the end product can’t be formulaic, especially not for $50-100K.
You also need good marketing. I think, on this project, the marketing is easier than the product. Finding wealthy people with large egos is 1.) often repetitive and 2.) not as hard as one might think.
It’s very doable.
My Thoughts
Back of the napkin…
50 books/yr at $50K/per = $2.5M. 50% to the writers. You probably need about 12 writers full-time. They make $100K each, ballpark. This means you make $1.25M – whatever it takes to market for and sell 50 books.
The only question: Can you cost effectively sell 50 of these a year. I bet yes.