Q&A: I want to sell my eBook idea but not write the eBook itself. Is this possible?
Question by curious: I want to sell my eBook idea but not write the eBook itself. Is this possible?
I want to sell my eBook idea because the process of writing the eBook itself is too complicated, tedious and time-consuming for me. Plus I don’t want to wait for a month to get paid – I want to earn and withdraw sales income within a couple of days. Since I won’t be able to do these things, I’d rather just sell off the idea. It’s not that I have just the topic for the eBook – I have actually written down the entire book but in MS Word format. The topic of the book is suicide (as in anti-suicide!). So I want to sell this script to anyone interested in taking it and compiling it into an eBook. But I expect to get paid upfront after giving the prospective buyer a few snippets of what could be found inside the book. It’s not your run-of-the-mill anti-suicide book. Some of the subject is pretty out there but the subject never fails to be serious. I was hoping to sell it for a quick $ 250 or there and thereabouts. Whoever could turn it into an eBook, and price it at, say, $ 12,50 each could recoup their money after the sale of just 20 copies. If they were to sell only 400 copies (which is itself pretty low) they could get $ 5000 in income. I’m looking at a book that could sell in the 000s of copies. The reason I’m pricing it low is cos it cost me nothing to compile it, I need the quick cash + the actual work of turning it into an eBook would be left to whoever buys my idea. How can I safely, legitimately and quickly sell my idea? I don’t think this is unethical because, like Yahoo Answers, it is based on skills-sharing, of sorts!
Best answer:
Answer by Azriel
It sounds to me HIGHLY unlikely that you’ll get anyone to agree to that proposition.
In general people who write want to use their own ideas.
There’s no quick way to make money on books – publishing is a long process. If the book is indeed that good, and you really do have the whole thing written already you might do well to send the manuscript to a few publishers and see what response you get.
Nobody is going to want to just buy the manuscript as is.
What do you think? Answer below!
