Valuing an intellectual property business

[nkt0]

This is an esoteric question but one that i'm struggling with. I should probably consult an immigration lawyer, but i thought i'd try this wonderful community first!

My SO and i are immigrating to Canada from the US. We currently own a LLC partnership in the US together, which we use to publish her novels. Part of the immigration package is to determine your net worth and assets. The business is an asset, but it doesn't have any physical assets attached to it (other than my SO's laptop). We do have over 15 intellectual property "products" (i.e. books), though. They generate revenue every month in the form of sales on various book stores. Ninety-five percent of sales are from digital goods (ebooks).

The application calls for something called "book value" and "estimated gross value". It gives no real direction on either of those measures. Some internet searches have led me to believe that "book value" is related to the physical assets of the business. In our case, that's just the laptop. Assuming that's sufficient, the other "gross value" has me stumped. Do i estimate "gross value" of intellectual property assets and if so, how?

[G-dog]

So, it sounds like you mostly have intangible assets.

The books should be covered by copyright law - the term for copywrite is long (in the US). You may want to check CA laws.  Not sure if you only publish, or do print as well. You may have copyright to any cover art as well.

You could model how much you make on each book, how long sales last, how many books you are projected to publish in the next 1, 2, and/or 5 years - and generate some values from that (may want to report as a range - expect to generate between $x - $y in sales).

If there are books in a series, I would expect the value to be different than 15 independent books (the series will boost sales of the older books, create more interest in the new).

You may also want to describe what you do to protect and enforce your copyrights.