Turning a book into a website

legally

[moltar]

I want to make several websites out of certain books. Obviously, I want to go the legal way and either buy or licence the rights for books' content. I am wondering:

• What sort of complications could arise?
  
• How should I legally deal with this?
  
• Did anyone do this before?
  
• What steps should I take?
  

[Webwork]

Never done it.

Contact the publishing house and the author.

Assume it's not a public domain book.

[pendanticist]

moltar hits a thousand, moltar hits a thousand...;)

[willybfriendly]

Moltar, that was your 1000th post! Congrats

You don't state what kind of books. I am aware of one successful site based on "Classic Literature" that is entirely public domain books from the 19th Century and earlier. Evidence suggests the owner is using it to support PR and links to other, shall we say, "less noble", web endeavors.

WBF

[moltar]

:)

I am looking into any kind of technical books, listings, reviews... Anything that would make a good website. I am not looking for novels or anything like that.

[PatrickDeese]

There is no way to do it without express written permission of the author / copyright holder.

I would guess, in most cases that the author would not be interested, as presenting the information online would simply detract from their book sales.

[moltar]

There is no way to do it without express written permission of the author / copyright holder.

That is exactly the kind of info I am looking for. What kind of documents/agreements would I need? Any concerns about that?

I would guess, in most cases that the author would not be interested, as presenting the information online would simply detract from their book sales.

I would have to disagree on that one. I won't mention that the site was build from the content of a book. Users will never know that. Chances that a user visiting my website also will buy the book are very slim.

[Rosalind]

If it's not a public domain book, it wouldn't make sense for a publisher to allow you to make it available on the web, unless it's out of print. In which case the contents could be out of date or simply not in demand. Whereas with public domain work you have the issue of search engines not indexing duplicate content.

[hunderdown]

Actually, I've read several stories over the past few years about people putting the entire content of a book on the web, and finding that it increased sales. Why? Because people found it who wouldn't have otherwise found the book, and it is easier to read a and carry around a physical book than a bunch of unrelated web pages. (I've posted several chapters of a book I wrote on my site, and it certainly seems to have that effect.) I wouldn't assume that no one will be interested--though establishing contact with the right person at a large publisher, and getting them to license the rights to you, might be difficult.

So yes, you will need to establish a contract with the rights holder, which may be the publisher of the physical book, but may not be--if the author held on to electronic rights, they might be the person to contact. In the contract, at a minimum you would need to define the rights you were acquiring, the content, the time period, and what you would pay the rights holder. I'd suggest a percentage of revenue.

However, you might be able to make a case for free, if you approach them and offer to publicize their book, by creating a web site at no cost to them. Be open about the benefit to you too--more traffic to your site, income from AdSense or whatever--so they won't suspect a hidden agenda.

You probably want some sample contracts. Do some searching--I've seen stuff online that would help you, but I'm sorry, I can't remember where. The contract does not need to be loaded with detailed legalese, just spell out what you want to do, and what obligations you have to the rights holder and vice versa.

Good luck! This is a long-term project and an interesting one....

[moltar]

Thank you hunderdown! That was very informative.

I will try to find some point of contact for some books I am interested in.