Using the Public Domain to Make Money
If you use information from the public domain correctly you can take ‘out of copyright’ books, films etc. and use them in your business to produce new works and sell them for a profit either offline or online
What products can be ‘in’ the public domain?
Most people think of books, however, out of copyright can also apply to music, film and software to name a few.
As books are the most popular public domain option we’ll look at how you can take a book, resell it and keep 100% of the profits… legitimately.
First things first, copyright varies from country to country and years to years so it would be impossible to cover every eventuality here.
Second, I am not a lawyer – nor do I pretend to be one – so this is NOT legal advice. If you are in any doubt please seek your own legal counsel.
That said, public domain material offers a vast opportunity for you to produce profits in your business. As an introduction to public domain we’ll stick with the easiest way you can profit from it.
The UK copyright law states that copyright exists on books for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years after death. This is quite hard to track and requires a fair amount of research so as you can guess it’s not my favourite way to use Public Domain.
Thus I recommend you look to the USA for public domain works.
Any book published in the USA before 1923 is in the public domain and freely available for you to use as you wish.
Now, before you think if it’s that old it must be out of date, let me point out that in many cases what was relevant then is still relevant and useable today.
There are many cases of people selling recipe books from pre 1923, books on gardening hobby business subjects and many others.
So check out the public domain and learn how it can help you make money