Quite possibly, you have been told of public domain publishing as a method of earning money online.  I want 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 might know, many books and other works have entered the public domain (fallen out of copyright restrictions) and may be republished, in any form, by any person who wishes to do so. In the United States most works published through the year 1923 are considered now to be public domain (”PD”).

If you discover a PD book you believe people would purchase if it were republished, you could reprint it as a physical book and sell copies on eBay, Amazon or your own web site. Some enterprising individuals have done exactly this with old correspondence courses and other non-fiction, how-to type materials from years past.

On the other hand, you could package your PD discovery as an ebook and make it available for downloading, for a price. This is probably the more usual way that people are bringing in money these days from the public domain.Again, how-to, self-improvement and other non-fiction works will prove to be the most profitable.

Now about that little twist I mentioned.  The method I prefer is to make PD books freely available on the web, and place advertising on their pages. Strictly speaking, then, you are selling ad space, not the book itself.

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.

After some searching, he was able to find a facsimile edition of the book that he could buy for ten dollars. He scanned the pages, converted them with OCR software, and posted the entire book to a site he registered just for this purpose.

He went further than that, though. On his site’s pages, he surrounded the book’s text with Google AdSense and affiliate merchant ads. He then made money when visitors clicked on the AdSense ads or purchased stuff through the affiliate links. By the way, if you’re wondering, 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 flow of golf enthusiasts, science fiction fans, Victorian literature lovers and the simply curious, he reports. And the ads on his pages bring him money!

It’s a concept that many others could copy, of course. Public-domain sources are abundant nowadays.  You might be able to find a suitable book in one of the many web-based PD archives, preferably something that not many other people have discovered yet.

One good thing about 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 users to your web 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 Internet 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 truly a potentially lucrative area.Further, how you “repurpose” your public domain finds is completely up to you.  That’s what makes it so much fun, as well as profitable.

This method of publishing public domain material is also described 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 an excellent review of it at Can You Still Make Money Selling Used Books on Amazon?

 

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,