Question: How can I find someone who is interested to buy a book that I wrote? I mean to buy the whole copyright of the book for themselves. Is it possible as opposed to selling it to a publisher?
Answer:
First, to clarify, you don’t sell a book to a publisher anyhow — what you’re doing in a traditional book deal is licensing the rights to publish your book in accordance with the terms of the contract.
Second, by definition, you are actually seeking to sell the copyrights to your book to a *publisher*. Why? Because a publisher is the only entity that can get value out of your book. In other words, your book needs to be published in some format, and it’s a publisher who does that. Otherwise, why would someone buy your copyrights? Two exceptions: (1) A film producer, but they don’t buy rights… they “option” them; (2) a business entity, which I’ll answer about below.
(Incidentally, copyrights is not a typo. It’s plural because you own multiple rights to your book… paperback, hardcover, audio, digital, foreign language, film and theatrical, and more.)
Now, that said, there’s a reason this is all unlikely and is not the way it typically works…
You as the author are essentially gaining nothing in this theoretical deal versus a traditional book deal (licensing the rights). Why? Because most books lose money after all the costs to publish them. Publishers typically expect that 10–20% of their books will make money, another 10–20% will come out about even, and the remaining 60–80% will lose money. The only way to hedge against those odds (besides developing psychic superpowers to predict only winners) is to minimize expenses where possible. And this means *not* buying out the rights to an author’s book.
In other words, as a publisher I am not going to pay you more to buy the rights to your book than I’ll pay to license them. Therefore, you as the author are worse off — you’re making no more money in the deal *and* you’ve sold all your rights. It’s like selling me your car for the same price as you’d rent it to me.
And this is why such an arrangement almost never happens.
A smart, savvy, and strategic author — the kind who’d likely write a great book — is unlikely to be the person who’d sell all her rights to it. Also, from a publisher’s perspective, it signals to me that you have zero confidence in your book; otherwise, why not retain your rights?
Now, to go to the “glass is half full”…
Let’s say you just read all that and don’t care. You want to sell your rights in full. Then you’ll need to pursue one or both paths:
- Fiction or nonfiction — Approach publishers and agents just as you would a typical trade deal, but indicate your interest in *selling* all your rights. Give them a compelling and logical reason why you’re doing this (that counters your apparent lack of confidence in your book). Be sure to go for publishers/agents who already handle books like yours — most specialize or focus in certain subject areas or genres. And be prepared for lots and lots of rejection. You’re swimming upstream.
- Nonfiction only — You can approach businesses that cover the same subject area as your book. If your material is valuable enough, they might have interest in publishing it in some capacity. This might be the book itself or, more likely, a derivative format such as a report, white paper, social media content, blog posts, podcast script, or newsletter content. If I could pay you $3,000 for your rights and then slice and dice your book into 20 blog posts, dozens of social-media posts, a couple newsletter articles, and a bonus for new subscribers, that would be a deal compared to paying someone to write all those things separately.
There’s no harm in trying to do what you seek. Just be aware it’s an unconventional approach and thus much more likely to be ignored or rejected. You’ll need a very compelling proposal that “sells” your idea and explains why you want to do this. Your content will need to be *very* good because, sadly, writing is a commodity — the value is in the thought (hence the popular term “thought leadership”), if it’s nonfiction, and in the narrative, if it’s fiction. And last, any offers you get will almost certainly be less than you think is fair.
As for the “how” in your question… read up on all you can find online about seeking out a publisher or agent. There are tons of answers here on Quora, and tons more elsewhere online. And when it comes to approaching a business as I outlined above, you’d start by contacting relevant businesses’ communications managers. (Your content falls under “communications” in the business world.) The quickest way to find who these people are is to check out the business’s LinkedIn page and list of employee profiles.