Selling public domain content

looking for advice on this

[coolmacguy]

I recently found some books that were written in the 20s and 30s that are now in the public domain. These books are however extremely good and I'm considering trying to sell digital versions of them online. Now I know that normally selling public domain stuff is not considered a desirable position since it is not a unique product and everyone else can sell it too. You can still by hard copies from Amazon and other publishers, but there are only a few people selling them as ebooks.

I feel confident that I could create a more compelling offer than the other people (better description, sales copy, guarantee, etc.) but I'm still concerned that most people would realize that if they looked hard enough they could probably find them for free (the full text is posted in several places online but it's not necessarily easy to find). I could just avoid mentioning when they were written at all, but that would negate one of the big advantages IMO, the fact that they were written so long ago but are still extremely relevant today.

I guess I'm just interested if anyone else has had success doing something like this. What kinds of things can be done to convince people that your presentation of the book is better than someone else's?

[BigDave]

You have to also consider what can then be legally done with the contents of your ebook. You do not own it. What would it take for someone to take away your business and would you have any recourse?

[coolmacguy]

Well, this isn't going to be my only business. I wouldn't really need it for anything important. It's just an idea I had that I figured might be worth a bit if I could make it work well.

[Livenomadic]

Honestly, if it's in the public domain your not gonna sell more than a handful in a year.

This is simply because there are so many sites out ther providing public domain material for free.

[gethan]

You do know about project Gutenberg [gutenberg.net]? I wouldn't want to waste time competing with that.

You could add value to your product by adding commentary/notes etc - your notes would be protected by copyright.

But for rare specialist public domain material (and with confidence in the digital rights management system) maybe there is a market?

[hunderdown]

In addition to adding notes, you could add illustrations, if they would enhance the content. An attractive design would be a plus too. The complete works of many 19th century novelists are available for free on Project Gutenberg, but publishers do very well with paperbacks of the classics.... An ebook isn't as easy to tote around as a paperback, of course. You should think carefully about your audience. Would they be willing to pay for this ebook you plan to create? That's the issue.

[BigDave]

Don't think that just adding a few comments is enough to get a supportable copyright on them. They need to be substantial.

For example, if you had a comic strip that is now in the public domain, and added the text above it "This is one of my favorites", that would not gain you any copyright protection.

If you write a few paragraphs explaining how it relates to the politics of the time, that new content is protectable, but you gain no protection over the original PD content.

If you are interested in helping put those old works back out there, I think that you should go ahead and do it. Sell them and get whatever money you can from it. But if you are doing it only for the money, I'm afraid that you will be disappointed.

[coolmacguy]

Honestly, if it's in the public domain your not gonna sell more than a handful in a year.

This is simply because there are so many sites ther providing public domain material for free.

I agree that is a possibility. However, as I stated, there are not many sites providing this material for free.

You do know about project Gutenberg? I wouldn't want to waste time competing with that.

Gutenburg does not have anywhere close to every public domain work (and indeed it does not have the ones I am referring to).

If you are interested in helping put those old works back out there, I think that you should go ahead and do it. Sell them and get whatever money you can from it.

That honestly was part of the motivation for considering it.

[grayhair]

We are doing a similar thing with public domain works. Some of the books are available on one or two other sites but others are not available anywhere else online (yet). They are available used but are rather scarce and expensive, some very expensive. To date we do not charge for the ebook as I have not made a downloadable file of them. We are in the process of republishing them in hard copy, doing our own printing and binding on-demand.

Even if we do provide a downloadable e-book and a hardcopy for sale, we will still leave the online version free. This may be counterintuitive, however, so many of the people who are interested in these subject matters either do not even "do computers" or do not like to read online. I feel that if they can "thumb through" the book online they may want to buy it. If not, oh well, they'll probably tell their friends about it.

In our case, too, it is more about saving the content and making it available. It is not our primary source of income although we do hope to make it a more significant source of income.

The books you have that are copyright after 1922 may or may not be in the public domain. Have you checked to make sure?

[photocartoonist]

I was wondering the same thing. How do you know that this material is in the public domain? Did you pay for a copyright search at the Copyright Office? My understanding is that anything created after 1927 might be covered by the copyright laws still.

[aeclark]

It would really good be a good idea to speak to a lawyer with Intellectual Property experience; particularly if you plan to sell the ebooks internationally; as different countries have different laws as to when a book enters the public domain.
A good place for background reading is the World Intellectual Property Organisation:
www (dot) wipo (dot) int/about-ip/en/