SELLER SUCCESS – Wild Hearts Romance

In February, Wild Hearts Romance was sold on Flippa for $355,000. Here’s the story on how that success played out.

SOLD: $355,000

VIEWS: 6,317

WATCHERS: 150

About the Business

Created all the way back in January 2013, Wild Hearts Romance is an independent romance publisher operating on the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and iBook store. The business essentially operates two separate revenue generating programs. Firstly, they own the copyright to over 200 different romance novels that they produce themselves. Secondly, the publish and distribute other romance novels, taking a 50% share of revenue.

As a fully digital business, the owners never have to worry about physical inventory or shipping and can sell the same product time and time again, never running out or having to work with suppliers to be sure that manufacturing schedules are on target. Having an email list of over 66,000 excited readers, Wild Hearts Romance was able to market their new releases successfully through this internal channel as well as social media, rarely needing to spend on advertising outside of the Amazon or iBook platforms themselves.

On top of being an evergreen industry, essentially recession proof (people will always be reading!), around 90% of the sales were from customers in the US. The monthly net profit was $16,380 and it was assumed that with the proper growth model put into place, there was no reason this profit couldn’t go even higher.

The Listing and It’s Success

Originally posted on Flippa at the beginning of the year, on January 9th 2020, the listing got excellent traction from the get go. As a unique and exciting business with a well written business listing, we weren’t surprised to see that it had over 6,200 views from eager members of the Flippa community along with 154 excited watchers and almost 100 discussions that had been started by interested buyers.

At the end of the month, being one of our own favorite listings of the month, Flippa featured the owner of the business on their live streamed Seller Showcase Webinar.

Wild Hearts Romance founder Kosta discusses his company with Flippa CEO Blake as it is currently up for sale on flippa.com

This was an opportunity for the business to be featured in a new way. Having the owner himself run through a presentation of their booming statistics and subsequently be interviewed by a member of the Flippa team gave potential buyers the chance to get to know the business on a visceral, human level. We often find that showcasing the people behind the listing is an important and evocative way to connect potential buyers with the business, making it more than just words on a screen. This is why Flippa runs such webinars and also offers Marketing Boosts that include personal video interviews as a part of the package.

Among all of the prospective buyers, a dozen people engaged in extensive reviews and negotiations with owners, performing due diligence so that they could fully understand each aspect of this unique business. The seller was a breeze to work with, happy to share all necessary information so that these feverish buyers could determine if the business was right for their portfolio.

All offers were discussed privately between the buyers and sellers and just 40 days after the listing was launched, a deal was reached for $355,000.

What Made This Listing So Compelling?

Wild Hearts Romance attracted a lot of attention, particularly for such a high value business in an industry that only a few entrepreneurs have experience operating.

All said and done, this was a unique opportunity to acquire a well-established business with rather incredible monthly income from two stable giants – Amazon and Apple – with an inventory of digital assets that could be sold time and time again.

The opportunity was a fit for an entrepreneur eager, excited to evaluate the current marketing and distribution channels and grow the business to the next level or for an investor looking for an easy to run business with a high level of automation that could be run by a small team of remote staff.

The new owner could take advantage of a proven model creating more content. Also, the buyer could explore other genres, monetize the email list with affiliate offers, and try other sales platforms. 

How can you find a similar site?

Click here for search results for all the current listings on Flippa that have to do with books! Feel free to use the filters on the left side to highlight the results based on your budget, the business’s monthly profit, or any other factors that might influence your decision.