For the most part, the conversation about how and where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will make their money has been dominated by bad-faith actors, like the Daily Mail and other British tabloids. They’ve been near hysterical at the thought that Meghan and Harry would become celebrity-royals for hire and end up doing milk ads in China or something. Harry and Meghan have their own money, first of all, and they’re getting financial support from Prince Charles for a year, so they have time to figure out their financial futures. And I trust Meghan’s judgment here – she’s a planner and she has a good handle on celebrity-royal branding. She will understand instinctively what is acceptable as far as business arrangements are concerned. Plus, she’s got contacts all over Canada and America. I trust her. So what will the Sussex Royal brand be? And what ventures will they enter into? Vanity Fair’s business section had a better and more comprehensive look:

The SussexRoyal IG: @sussexroyal, which has become the definitive platform for Harry and Meghan’s messaging since its creation last April, has now caught up with @kensingtonroyal, the official Instagram account of Prince William and Kate Middleton. As my colleague Kenzie Bryant noted, “In less than a year, the Sussexes made up the difference, plus a few mil. They are now tied for the most followers for a British royal account.”

The Obama playbook: The current thinking is that Harry and Meghan are poised to replicate the Obama playbook, with the potential to build out a media portfolio similar to the one that has netted tens of millions of dollars for the former first couple through publishing contracts, stadium tours, and production deals with streaming-entertainment titans like Netflix and Spotify. As one London-based talent agent suggested this week to the Associated Press, “They are 100% more valuable than the Obamas. The Obamas aren’t royal. They are.”

Going to Netflix? There was that video of Harry schmoozing with Disney chief Bob Iger, and Ted Sarandos seemed to open the door during a recent event in Los Angeles. Asked if Netflix would be interested in doing something with the couple, Sarandos told the Press Association news agency, “Who wouldn’t be interested? Yes, sure.”..“There really only is one choice for them given the global reach of the royals,” said media analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. “It has to be Netflix. Everyone else just doesn’t make sense.” In other words, Greenfield explained, none of the other streaming players that would be obvious contenders—never mind Meghan’s supposedly forthcoming voiceover work for Disney—have the international footprint and genre flexibility that Netflix does. “If I think about Meghan and Harry’s global appeal, which mirrors a show like The Crown, I literally think there’s only one place on planet Earth you’d want to be if you wanted to maximize your celebrity. They’re a global franchise, and there’s just not a lot of ways to truly penetrate the global reach of the crown, pun intended, other than Netflix.”

How about some memoirs? Harry and Meghan may choose to start a little smaller—say, with a book or two. Publishing sources put the likely price tag of a Harry memoir in the ballpark of $15 million, worldwide rights. “I think it would have to be a memoir by him,” a senior industry source told me, “since writing it together would probably be unwieldy and would look tacky and opportunistic. And there might not be enough there yet for a memoir by her, as much as people want to hear from her.” After the hypothetical best seller, what comes next, and what could it look like? ”I literally have no idea,” said Greenfield. “But I have to believe that leveraging their global visibility into some form of production entity would make a tremendous amount of sense, and the Obamas have kind of blazed the trail both on the video and the audio side.”

But maybe the Obama comparison doesn’t hold up: “The idea that there’s an Obama analog here strikes me as a real stretch,” said a high-level Hollywood source. “Mrs. Obama is a proven public intellectual who had a highly deserved reputation, as first lady, for being an advocate on causes that are important to her, and also for being an excellent communicator of those things. Then you go to the 44th president, who is just a world-class rock star, who knows as much about myriad different things as anybody on the public stage. They’re both just filled with knowledge and the ability to communicate. With the greatest respect to Harry and Meghan, what do they know about anything?”

[From Vanity Fair]

I think it’s interesting that there might be a bigger market – and a bigger paycheck – for Harry’s memoir rather than Meghan’s. That might even be true? Especially given the fact that – don’t hate me Sussex Squad – Meghan isn’t a great writer? But here’s my larger question regarding memoirs and interviews: is there a shelf-life? Would Meghan and Harry need to give an interview in the next, say, six months for it to be relevant and newsworthy? Could Harry get a book deal and then, while promoting the book, give those kinds of guts-spilling interviews? What I think is that there would be more interest in a BOOK from Harry and there would be more interest in a tell-all interview from Meghan. But, again, they have a lot of options and I’m sure Meghan Thee Planner is working everything out.

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