Public Domain Publishing: How to Get Started At All
Public Domain Publishing: How to Get Started At All
(There I was, answering emails, when someone asked me “How do I get started publishing public domain books?” And this very long email resulted. Obviously, you needed to get this data as well, since it’s built on about a decade of my experience.
At this end of this post is a free download for you. No opt-in, just for you.)
As usual, you need to test everything for yourself. Some of that book’s marketing advice is mostly to get your own inspiration running.
(Another disclaimer is to know and follow the laws and rules. Your mileage may vary. Know their rights as well as your own. Below is my opinion based on my own journey. Your journey is your own.)
Know U.S. and foreign copyright limits.
The first thing you need to know is American copyright limits. These are nicely stated on Wikipedia in a couple of places. They are also at the beginning of that downloadable book. Pre-1923 is safe in the U.S. And if the author has been dead over 70 years, it’s safe in most countries internationally. After that point, it gets a bit murky and detailed. Can be done, but there’s no reason to dive into the deep end to teach yourself how to swim.
Generally, if it’s on Gutenberg, they’ve already done the research on it.
Now: Gutenberg licenses. You probably ought to scan these over to see what they are expecting. Mostly, that license is to protect Project Gutenberg itself. The Public Domain label is applicable to the original text. Anything added by anyone else is their copyright, which includes covers.
There are other places, like Feedbooks.com and Manybooks.net who produce public domain books without the Gutenberg license on them. Feedbooks also has books that are questionable in the U.S. but fine in most European countries. You have to check carefully, so know the above before you start getting books. (Getting PD from Gutenberg Canada isn’t generally useful anywhere else, as they only recognize author death + 50 years.)
Key is Adding Value
Sales from PD is where you are unique. PD books are public commodities, but you want to make unique versions by adding value. Weird, but true. You need to put ebooks into collections, or link to their audio version, or create courses from them. Or illustrate them, etc. You want to make versions available that they can’t get somewhere else. Many have audio versions read by Librivox, which are also PD recordings. Be creative, imaginative, add more value by re-publishing them better than anywhere else.
You can start a Blogger blog and post your promotion about them. Courses can go on Thinkific or Teachable (both have free programs.) Paperbacks and hardbacks can be created on Lulu.com. eBook distribution is as below. You can also sell your books with Gumroad (or other provider) links, directly from your site.
The key point of adding value is through real marketing. Most PD books have lousy covers and poor descriptions. Making these books come alive is the greatest thing you can do for them. Setting up a great sales page on your blog and linking to where they can buy them will get you additional sales.
You can also create books out of PD selections, although these have to be promoted from scratch. I do have a book on the Law of Attraction which sells somewhat, but I’ve never been interested much in promoting it, so that explains why.
Select those you are interested in
My most successful books have been those where I was fascinated with the book itself and worked up new versions. This is particularly true of PD textbooks which are being sold at ridiculous prices. Create new paperback and hardback editions, then offer them for less. Working up courses from the material is also very useful. You get to learn from those books, and then teach others. It’s a lot of work, but if you take the most popular books (that sell for you) then you can utilize those to produce more income.
The trick is to follow your bliss, and help people by bringing these old books back into better distribution.
If you’d like to have a paperback version of your own, then that passion will show through your marketing of it.
Where to submit
The key scene with public domain is that Amazon doesn’t really want any more of these, and their bots will give you nasty threats when you submit there unless you exactly follow their instructions. Amazon has mostly discouraged aggregators and publishers from sending PD to them, and so most American aggregators won’t touch PD books at all.
The simplest way to submit PD ebooks is through PublishDrive.com, which is out of Hungary. Only two or three out of hundreds of their ebook outlets won’t accept PD books, one of which is Amazon. They are very picky about getting books approved, but are great at distributing them quickly once they are accepted.
This doesn’t apply to print books, and the best way to get them into wide distribution is through Lulu.com. Createspace will simply suppress your PD book if it might give Amazon some legal hassles. Again, you are giving your Createspace version over to Amazon to distribute and so are subject to their whims and quirks. Paperbacks through Lulu, although you can’t meet the Createspace prices, will go much further and you’ll get sales from other outlets through Ingram.
A note on Print on Demand (POD)
In general, you aren’t going to compete on price alone. Createspace tries, but have their own problems. The general scene with paperbacks is that 1) ebooks sell better, 2) You have to add 55% markup to get it into distribution with bookstores or Amazon, 3) Mass-market paperbacks and long print runs are cheaper than POD.
The sweet spot in general is under 200/250 pages. Because the covers are the most expensive cost of printing, except in POD, where it’s the same cost. Especially true for hardbacks. Above that page-range and regular printing can compete better.
That said, you’ll sell more paperbacks because you are one of a few who have them out there for that book. And most of the covers and descriptions for PD books are really bad. So giving it a great cover and an engaging description will get you sales.
More on marketing
Otherwise, getting sales is just promotion. You want to get people’s email addresses and mail to them regularly (do as I say, not as I do…) Become a resource for that particular niche of information. (check out the Writing and Publishing References on Living Sensical site — https://livesensical.com/book-series/writing-publishing-references/)
Promotion is what enables a book to be found. Amazon buries books on their site, and is more the indie author graveyard than a success story. Promoting your niche-set of books in other areas (and having their direct sales links available on your blog-articles) will enable people to find them. (Of course, you encourage people to buy directly from you. See my examples on the books I make available on Living Sensical: Amazon paperback, Lulu with discounts, Gumroad for “pay what you want.”)
(I just need to do more promotion, and my life has been mostly wrapping up research up to this point. But I’m working this all out…)
Then push out regular content about these through your blog and anywhere else you can find. Set up a giveaway for people who want to get the data in exchange for their email.
I strongly suggest you get a copy of “Content Inc.” by Joe Pulizzi. This sets up any one to succeed in a content business with the general roadmap. (That link is a short presentation overview — get the whole book for deep study and understanding.)
And be sure to get onto Goodreads and LibraryThing to list your books. This is where the serial-readers are found, the ones who read a novel a week, some will read two a day. Get them fascinated with classics and coming to your brand for the great ones.
Porting your blog posts to Medium could be another income source for you, particularly where you (as the expert) can tell people how a classic book is very useful now.
Getting set up to publish
In the beginning of that book below, I recommend getting LibreOffice and Calibre. Those two will produce everything you need in order to publish, excepting only the cover and description. The cover you can create with Canva, or with GIMP (like Photoshop, only free.) Download a sample Canva cover and it will tell you the dimensions needed for Kindle. (Otherwise, it’s 6.25"x9.5" at 300DPI…) Calibre keeps all your data in one place.
Once you’ve suffered through the learning curves on a few books, it gets easier. (I often joke that after the first hundred, it gets very easy.)
After doing this for nearly a decade, I can take a PD book and have it ready for re-publishing in about a half-hour. You have to start with a quality version to begin with (not the ones that are simple OCR scans, and aren’t proofed.) And I do my own covers (but I’m a recovering graphic artist.)
Don’t worry about sales
This is a numbers scene. I’ve found as a general rule that 50% of the books I publish don’t sell at all, and 20% of those that do bring in 80% of the income. About 4% will be very good sellers for you. So you want to get as many high-quality books up there that you can, as fast as you can, all in a specific niche you can become an expert in because you’re already fascinated about them.
Sales follows passion and promotion. You have to follow your bliss and work for the joy in all things you do. And be prolific in all things.
Eventually, you’ll have a stable of books and will see from your sales where you need to concentrate.
Again, you have to have good covers, but streamline your production with economics. Canva.com for covers instead of Fiverr. You can use PD images from Pixabay.com
I have heard of one person doing very well on sales, but he gets most of them from Amazon via Createspace. Most of his ebooks that continue to sell are unique collections and are priced at .99 each. Strange bedfellows. Mostly a race-to-the-bottom numbers-game. But a profitable one if you know the rules, and publish in huge volumes.
I’ve almost always gotten more sales from elsewhere than from Amazon. Currently, I still get well over half my sales from everywhere else. This was without marketing, just making them available. Getting your books up everywhere else via aggregators is a very simple operation. Fewer hassles. No troll-bots.
Using routine promotion, building and serving your niche audience is the other half of that coin — something I’m disciplining myself to do now.
As usual, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of study, lots of applied tests, lots of inspired action ahead.
Glad to have you here. And those public domain books will appreciate the love you’ve shown them.
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Originally published at Living Sensical.