Free to Members: A Mini-book That Shows You How to Find Out if a Book Is Still Copyrighted
I have added this book to the Members' Free Manuals list.
You can make money by creating collections of public domain books and documents. If you can find a good book that drives home a point or shows people how to do something, you can convert that book into money if the book is in the public domain.
Public domain books are like unnoticed hundred dollar bills floating down the gutter. Look down. Reach down. Pick them up.
But be careful before you try to "spend" them.
The copyright laws began to change radically in 1978. Yet there are still hundreds of thousands of books that you are legally allowed to sell.
This book shows you how to find out if a particular book is in the public domain.
Note: You are allowed to copyright a collection of public domain books if you add value to it, such as provide commentary.
Say that you create a CD with a dozen books on it. The CD also contains your comments on any or all of them. That commentary is copyrighted. No one can legally create a copy of your CD and sell it.
Of course, if you provide ads, disguised or not, for another product or service, you may want to adopt a policy of "Steal this CD-ROM!"
Another strategy. If you scan in a public domain book, then OCR it, and then re-typeset it -- or hire this done for (say) $1 a page -- you can create a problem for someone who wants to use your PDF file of the book to create his own CD-ROM. Here's how: Insert your comments: maybe in brackets, maybe indented, maybe in bold face, or even all three. The copycat must now strip out all of your comments in order to restore the document to public domain status. Your comments establish a property right to the modified document.
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