What is the procedure for selling a public domain ebook?

QUESTION: What is the procedure for making and selling an ebook based on a book which is in the public domain?

I’ll begin the answer by stating that I am NOT an expert at using public domain content, and haven’t done it before. However I have learned about the method involved, and will share some of that with you.

The first thing is to ensure you are dealing with public domain information. There are many ways to do it - your own research, hiring firms that will verify it for a fee, or buying certified public domain work.

The next is to decide if you are merely going to repackage the public domain work, or modify it significantly enough to make the derivative work your own copyrightable material. You can update, modify, edit, revise or expand upon public domain content, and by doing so will create a work that is reasonably different from the copyright-free original material - and you now own copyright of that derived work.

As far as selling such an ebook goes, the process is similar to how you would promote your own ebook or one you bought rights to resell - find an audience, see what they already are looking for, and position your product as the one offering the solutions they want.

One difficulty might be in convincing someone to buy a public domain work, especially if you are not editing or adding to it in any way. Some infopreneurs may worry it is ‘ripping off’ buyers.

I’ll counter that by saying you are still adding value to your buyers - by doing their research for them.

• How many people could have easily found the public domain book themselves?
• How many knew where to look or how to search for it?
• How much time and effort are you saving them by doing this work for them?
• How conveniently and effortlessly are you letting them access the material?

All of these things carry a value - and your pricing reflects that value. If a book in the public domain is out of print, and you locate a copy in a rare books store, then scan it and make it available electronically to a wider audience, isn’t that adding value? Of course it is.

On the other hand, if it’s a public domain resource that anyone can find and access easily, for free, you probably are going to find it hard to sell it or create value from merely making it available - and there, you can tweak, improve, enhance or compile a collection of similar works, adding value to your package.

Got an infopreneur question of your own? Ask me here… and I’ll try and answer it.