A Different Money-Making Idea for Public-Domain Books
Quite possibly, you’ve heard of public domain publishing as a method of earning money online. I would like to tell you about a twist on that idea that can have you bringing in extra income almost right away.
First, though, let’s review the fundamentals. As you may know, many books and other materials have entered the public domain (fallen out of copyright protection) and can be republished, in any form, by any person who wants to do so. In the U.S. most works published through the year 1923 are considered now to be public domain (”PD”).
If you uncover a PD book that you believe others would buy if it were republished, you could reprint it as a physical book and sell copies through eBay, Amazon or your own web site. Some enterprising folks have done exactly this with old correspondence courses and other non-fiction, how-to type materials from decades past.
On the other hand, you could repackage your PD discovery as an ebook and make it available for people to download, for a price. This is probably the more usual way that people are earning money now from the public domain. Once again, non-fiction, how-to and self-improvement are the most saleable subjects.
Now about that twist I mentioned. It involves making PD books freely available on the web, but with advertising on their pages. So, strictly speaking you are not selling books, but ad space.
A few years a guy named Steve Smith learned about a strange book from 1892 that combined a time-travel-type tale with a story about golf. Its title was Golf In the Year 2000.
Afer a bit of searching, he was able to find a copy of the book for just $10. He scanned the pages, converted them with opitcal character reading software, and posted the whole book to a site he registered specifically for that purpose.
Then he took it the next step. On his web pages, he surrounded the text of the book with Google AdSense and affiliate merchant ads. He then made money when visitors clicked on the AdSense ads or purchased things through the affiliate links. By the way, if you’re curious you can view his site at www.golf-in-the-year-2000.com.
Steve’s online edition of Golf In the Year 2000 attracts a steady stream of golf devotees, science fiction fans, Victorian literature lovers and the simply curious, he says. And the ads on his pages bring him money!
This is certainly an idea that could be copied by others. Public-domain sources are abundant nowadays. You might be able to find a suitable book in one of the many web-based PD repositories, preferably something that not many other people have discovered yet.
One good thing with this idea is that the book you showcase (and use to earn ad revenue) need not be restricted to non-fiction or how-to. As with Steve’s weird little golf/science fiction find, it can just be something that will attract visitors to your site, for the sheer novelty if nothing else.
You could also look in used-book stores to try to find something rare enough not to have made it to the web at all. In that case you will probably need to buy a scanner and some OCR software to get the text into your computer.
Public domain publishing is indeed a potentially lucrative field. And, how you “repurpose” your PD finds is entirely up to you. That’s what makes it so fun, as well as profitable.
This method of publishing public domain material is described at some length in this article, along with suggestions for further reading.
If you are interested in selling actual used books online, as on Amazon or eBay, there’s a downloadable report available that shows a new and mega-profitable way to do it. Check it out here or read a solid review of it at Can You Still Make Money Selling Used Books on Amazon?
