can i publish a public domain book and make money out if it?

[granturissimus]

i'm not planning to do this, but i wonder if its possible to get one of those old out of copyright books from a hundred years ago, and type it up and publish in the kindle store and even possibly sell it on there.

is this possible/legal?

[Baldrake]

Absolutely. If you head down to your nearest B&M bookstore, you will see many out-of-copyright books being sold for real money.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Baldrake

Absolutely. If you head down to your nearest B&M bookstore, you will see many out-of-copyright books being sold for real money.

But the better ones (eg Penguin classics) are worth buying because they have introductory essays and appendices, explanatory footnotes, etc.

To take a public domain book and publish it "raw" for money is, I think, extremely tacky.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

To take a public domain book and publish it "raw" for money is, I think, extremely tacky.

I have to disagree. How else are people going to be exposed to the classics? Libraries aren't an option for people who like to own the books, e-readers aren't for everyone, and not everyone likes hand-me-downs.

I do agree that fair pricing should be an issue.

[granturissimus]

if i were to do it, it would be to make a nicely formated version without typing errors, and nice linked table of contents and a nice cover.

so thats why i'd charge some money for that. in my expeirence so far, lots of kindle books have lots of errors and dont look nice... even ones that i bought.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

I have to disagree. How else are people going to be exposed to the classics? Libraries aren't an option for people who like to own the books, e-readers aren't for everyone, and not everyone likes hand-me-downs.

I was talking specifically about eBooks. Obviously paper books need to be published.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by granturissimus

if i were to do it, it would be to make a nicely formated version without typing errors, and nice linked table of contents and a nice cover.

so thats why i'd charge some money for that. in my expeirence so far, lots of kindle books have lots of errors and dont look nice... even ones that i bought.

Some people do that for free. See, for example, the book upload forums here at MR.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by granturissimus

i'm not planning to do this, but i wonder if its possible to get one of those old out of copyright books from a hundred years ago, and type it up and publish in the kindle store and even possibly sell it on there.

is this possible/legal?

Yes, it's legal. Yes, you can publish out-of-copyright text on Amazon. Whether you'll make any money is another matter.

There are quite a lot of copies of public domain texts on Amazon. Most of them are terrible - typos, bad formatting, etc. The difficulty is making your copy stand out from the rest. The best way to do that is by having a clean text, good formatting, excellent cover image and some extra content that adds something to the book. E.g. Illustrations, Glossary, Introductions, Biography.

It is by no means a way to "Get Rich Quick".

[Kindlevarazs]

I think there in no problem for publish a quality work (based on public domain) for a fee. It is a legal possibility for everyone. If you want to publish for free - it is your decision, if anybody wants and could sell it for free, let's do it!
To create a quality text and ebook is a serious work...

[foreverjuly]

I've heard that so many people have been doing this that Amazon has started to weed out classic words with an obscene number of identical copies from multiple publishers.

To the OP, this has been going on for quite some time, but there are so many free copies out there of these works that even getting many free downloads could be difficult. I'd say the ship has sailed on this one.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by granturissimus

i'm not planning to do this, but i wonder if its possible to get one of those old out of copyright books from a hundred years ago, and type it up and publish in the kindle store and even possibly sell it on there.

is this possible/legal?

Legal: yes and no. It's legal to publish your own edition, but it's not legal to re-publish someone else's. Book design and artwork all have their own copyrights. Another publisher's edition of a PD book may contain their own new copyrighted design, page ornaments, and such. If you want to make your own edition of a Project Gutenberg book I suggest that you avoid their ePub and MOBI versions as a source. To legally distribute a commercial version derived from their material you must remove ALL references to PG and some of these references are buried deep and require more than simple editing to remove.

Make money? Maybe. There are a lot of free versions of almost all PD books so it's hard to create an edition that adds enough value to become successful when it has to compete with the free editions. Also, some book vendors, Amazon in particular, will refuse to sell this type of book unless it does add value. Amazon recently removed 100s of books of this type that had begun to clutter their ebook store.

[Mark Rehorst]

If you want to add some value, proof read for spelling and wrong-word/grammatical errors that get introduced by OCR software that often used to convert scanned pages to text. Then, rather than releasing individual tomes, release them in sets with multiple works in one file, saving people the need to hunt down individual books in a series or other grouping.

It's like going to a record store and buying a box set of discs by your favorite artist. That one-stop shopping has a lot of appeal especially if you produce a quality product. Put some effort in and really hunt for everything you can find on a subject or by a specific author, etc. You may need to buy paper volumes and scan them yourself, so be prepared to invest in a scanner and OCR software.

[detayls]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

I have to disagree....
I do agree that fair pricing should be an issue.

If you publish it without changing anything in any way, you should price it at -$1.00 and that way people would learn and fairly the "purchaser" would benefit as well. Clearly you would have made no contribution at all unless you count the $1.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by granturissimus

is this possible/legal?

Yes it is, and there are many, many people that had the same idea before.

I have read an account of one guy that did exactly what you are contemplating. He took an old PD book, proofed it, formatted impeccably, added tables of content, indexes, bonus material and sold the books. His versions were quite popular.

At the end he was swamped out of market by very poor versions (that typically require about 30 seconds of preparation time) on Amazon.

Also, as previous posters said, Amazon cleaned up the database. There used to be many, *many*, versions of Pride and Prejudice in Amazon store. Now, I see just one.
Go and read some 1 star reviews. Those are reviews complaining about shoddy quality of PD copy that used to be sold on Amazon.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Some people do that for free. See, for example, the book upload forums here at MR.

Since Harry is too much a gentleman and as such modest; so he won't do it.
I 'll allow myself to point out that his own contributions to MRs library are of extraordinary quality in choice of material, composition, and error-checking.

There is in fact a fair bunch of uploaders here which should serve as a shining example to the legions of the self-made-publishers out there who should look ath their files and tell themselves " I shall not ask for money until I can do it twice as good as it's been done here"