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This Book Club Is Worth $900M?
Today, we cover why Candle Media invested $500M into Reese Witherspoons' book club and unpack 2 key principles that every entrepreneur can use to 10x their own outcomes by reducing risk.
GM! It's Tuesday, April 4th - Today, we cover why Candle Media invested $500M into Reese Witherspoons' book club and unpack 2 key principles that every entrepreneur can use to 10x their own outcomes by reducing risk.
Let's dig in!
- Callum
FEATURE
How Is A Book Club Worth $900M?

Reese Witherspoon turned her 2016-founded media company, Hello Sunshine, into a $120 million payday just 5 years later.
Candle Media investing $500 million for a majority stake, Reese pocketed a fortune and retained 18% ownership.
So, What Is Hello Sunshine?
Frustrated by the scarcity of substantial female lead roles, Witherspoon founded Hello Sunshine in 2016 to create female-driven content across film, TV, and digital platforms.
The company is home to shows like "Shine on Reese," "Big Little Lies," and most notably Reese’s Book Club – more on that soon.
Here's the shocking part - the company was generating $50-100M in revenue when Candle Media acquired it at a $900M valuation. This is a 9-18x revenue multiple.
So, why did Candle Media, a firm backed by Blackstone investment group, take such a big bet?
Here's Why: Reese developed a winning strategy to guarantee the success of every movie and TV show she puts out — her book club.
Unpacking The Book Club
Reese’s Book Club has 2.5m loyal subscribers that eagerly await the actress’ latest monthly selection. She began this book club informally on Instagram in 2015 but has since turned it into the main ingredient for Hello Sunshine’s success.
This is the process:
Before releasing her monthly book selection, Witherspoon reaches out to the prospective novel’s publisher.
In return for introducing the book to her 2.5M subscribers and driving sales, Witherspoon negotiates deals for the rights to turn these books into movies and TV series.
After obtaining the rights and feedback from her book club, she shops the potential show or movie around to streaming platforms like Netflix and Apple TV.
Witherspoon then strikes a deal with the streaming platforms, giving them the rights to the show and in exchange they fund her content.
This process works. Both “The Morning Show” and “Big Little Lies” received Emmys and raving audience approval.
Here's The Playbook
Creating movies and TV series is an EXTREMELY risky venture that requires a lot of money upfront with no guarantee of success.
But when you hit, you can hit big - for example, the TV sitcom Friends still makes Warner Bros. $1B/year in revenue.
Hello Sunshine developed a system to minimize the risk of these asymmetric bets.
Case Study - 'The Morning Show'
Step 1: Identify Book & Negotiate Rights - The TV Series The Morning Show, which stars Reese, was inspired by Brian Stelter's 2013 book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV. Reese negotiated TV rights for this book prior to Step 2.
Step 2: Share With 2.5M Member Book Club and monitor for engagement and feedback.
Step 3: Shop The Deal to Major Networks - The book club loved 'Top of the Morning' and Reese used this to spur demand from major production houses. In this case, Apple bought 2 seasons of “The Morning Show” for $300M.
Step 4: Get Paid - Not only does Reese benefit from the upside in her media company owning the rights to the show, but she gets paid to star in it! Reese makes $2M/episode for 'The Morning Show'.
Principles To Live By
Every business should try to reduce risk as much as possible. Reese does this in 2 ways:
Build A Community: The subscribers to Reese’s Book Club serve as a polling group, providing the company with direct feedback on what their target audience is interested in. The books that see the biggest spike in sales are the ones that get turned into TV series and movies. This reduces the risk of a flop.
Other Peoples Money: Hello Sunshine doesn’t put a penny into production until they get a streaming platform to fund the show or movie. By giving the concept rights to platforms in exchange for funding, they minimize the financial liability.