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If you're interested in receiving a cash offer for your KDP titles, email us at tbottorff@turnerpublishing.com or call us at (615) 618-0563.

Q & A

Background:

If you have published books through KDP and would like to receive a cash offer for the titles, we offer that. This typically comes in two forms. 1) You are the author and have self-published through KDP yourself or 2) You are a smaller (but mighty) publisher that has sourced content from authors and published them using KDP. In either circumstance, if you are interested in getting a cash offer for the books, please contact us and we will contact you to discuss it.

Who are we?

We are Turner Publishing based in Nashville, Tennessee. We are a top 100 independent publisher, named to Publishers Weekly’s Fastest Growing List, with over 6,000 titles, including bestsellers and award winners.

What is the process?

Here are the steps:

  1. You contact us at tbottorff@turnerpublishing.com or (615) 618-0563
  2. We contact you and review the info we need to calculate your offer. 
  3. You send us the data. 
  4. We make you an offer.
  5. You accept or reject the offer. 
  6. If you accept, we send you a publishing agreement or sale agreement and put the money in escrow.com
  7. You notify Amazon to transfer the titles to our account and transfer any other related files to a google drive we provide. 
  8. When the transfer is complete, escrow.com sends you the money.
Have you done this before?

Yes. We have purchased publishing rights from other publishers including KDP publishers. And yes, we have published books that were previously self published.

Why would someone want to do this?

There are any number of reasons. It could be that a publisher is publishing works of other authors through KDP and wants to exit the publishing business. It could be that an author wants to see their work get published by a larger publisher than just KDP or self published. It could be for life or estate reasons that a person decides they would like to convert their work into cash. The important thing is we offer publishers/self-publishers options on how to do that.

Can I sell or transfer publishing of some, but not all, of the KDP titles I have in my KDP account?

Not easily. Amazon doesn’t allow transfer at the title level, just the account level.

If you want to keep some titles, you would need to unpublish them from the account (aka titles you want to keep) and republish them in a new account which has some disadvantages in continuity of data and search at amazon.

How long does it take?

We try to give prompt responses-something that the publishing industry is not typically known for. Once we have the data on the titles, we can provide an offer in as little as 3 days. Time to close depends on how long it takes you to notify Amazon (we will give you specific instructions on how to do this to get it done the first time), how long it takes them to process the account change, and how long it takes to upload related files to the google drive. Normally a couple of weeks.

What are related files?

You may have created the manuscripts for the titles yourself or you may have obtained the content from an author. If you have obtained it from an author, you should have a publishing agreement or work for hire agreement. You will also have the source files for the book which would be something like an Adobe Indesign file.

What if I sell on KDP and elsewhere?

We will be buying the publishing rights to the titles, meaning we would be taking over ownership of the rights to sell the titles wherever they are sold. The copyright can remain in your name or the author's name. In this process, we will ask if you have sales outside of KDP and we will take that into account when we calculate the offer.

What if I pay the royalties to authors other than myself?

If you are using KDP to publish works from authors other than yourself, you provide that info in the related files and we take over responsibility for paying those royalties to the authors.

Can I sell you the rights for a limited period of time, like 5 years?

While it is legally possible to sell the rights for any period of time you negotiate with a publisher who buys them, we follow the most common industry model which is that the rights are sold for the life of the copyright.

If you have any other questions, please include them in your message and we will contact you to discuss it.