Did you know, there are products which you can sell today without needing to buy expensive licenses or approval from their creators?
There is a whole range of items which you can sell as your own. Such as books, photos, music and film.
Some of the most popular books are free for you to sell. Hollywood loves to exploit this huge resource as it allows them to make exciting films without the need to waste time and resources getting permission and paying the authors a fee.
Books by H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Emily Bronte, Bram Stoker, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Jules Verne, J.M. Barrie and Charles Dickens are available to use.
This huge resource of products is known as the public domain.
The public domain refers to creative works of art which have lost their copyright protection.
Today, anything you create is (should be) automatically protected by copyright and that protection lasts for a very long time but many years ago, the laws were not as automatic or protective.
During the days of Shakespeare I don’t believe there were any official copyright laws. Fortunately at that time, very few people could afford to print off pirate copies of his works.
Previously, when the copyright protection ended on a piece of work, if the author or publisher failed to renew, or simply decided to not renew the copyright protection, they lost all rights to the work.
When something falls out of copyright, it means that you can use it as your own. There is nothing stopping you from publishing and selling specific works by authors like Shakespeare, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle.
I don’t recommend putting your name to their works as the author though… it’s highly likely you will be found out!
You can take books like The War Of The Worlds by H.G Wells or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne and rewrite them to suit a more modern age and have no legal or financial issues whatsoever.
The BBC recently did a new UK based version of The ‘War Of The Worlds’ starring Rafe Spall where Martian Tripods wreaked havoc on quaint English villages and towns.
Adapting them slightly gives you an edge over other people publishing the same stories. Recently a film was made of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride And Prejudice’ featuring zombies called… wait for it … ‘Pride And Prejudice And Zombies’.
One of the best adaption’s of a public domain book is the inspired ‘Alice In Sunderland’ which was written in the regional dialect and accent of Sunderland.
Adapting a public domain book is good, however, please be aware, you can only use the original versions. Later modified versions will be copyrighted to the people who published them. You must check them out to ensure you can use them.
Recently Amazon released a film called Enola Holmes, it is the fictional story of Sherlock Holmes’ little sister.
It resulted with a copyright dispute from a publishing company because the version of Sherlock Holmes – played by Henry Cavill (on the left) – who featured in the film was ‘jovial’ in character making him a ‘later’ version of the character which is still protected by copyright… ridiculous I know!
So, yes you have to be a little careful but on the whole, you can take anything which is in the public domain and use it as your wish.
The success coach and self improvement guru Bob Proctor has made millions selling a course called ‘The Science Of Getting Rich’ which featured at its core the book with the same name written by Wallace D. Wattles first published in 1910.
Rhonda Byrne who produced the incredibly successful multi-million selling ‘The Secret’ book and docu-film, based it on the same ‘Science Of Getting Rich’ by Wallace D. Wattles.
‘The Secret’ has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide since 2006 and made over $65 million from DVD sales in 2007 in the United States alone.
Bob Proctor, Jack Canfield and Michael Beckwith were all interview by Rhonda Byrne for ‘The Secret’, and after it’s phenomenal success they teamed together and produced yet another ‘The Science Of Getting Rich‘ course and a series of seminars which cost several thousand pounds to buy… all off the back of that same one book by Wallace D. Wattles.
Bob is still running and live streaming seminars using the content from that book and others like Napoleon Hill’s 1937 ‘Think And Grow Rich’… another book which is in the public domain.
Other great metaphysical books that are in the public domain include ‘The Master Key System’ by Charles Haanel and ‘The Edinburgh Lectures On Mental Sciences’ by Thomas Troward.
There is nothing stopping you from taking the original works and publishing them to sell or even using the material and creating something new just as Rhonda Byrne and Bob Proctor have.
Project Gutenberg – www.gutenberg.org- is a great source of public domain books. Their aim is to find books which are in the public domain (USA) and offer them for free as eBooks.
Gutenberg is great for research and finding books that are out of copyright which you can sell or adapt into something new.
Stories like ‘Pillar Of Fire’ by Ray Bradbury which was originally published in the Pulp Fiction magazine ‘Planet Stories’ back in 1948.
Gutenberg say that extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was ever renewed. Making that story free to use as you wish.
Already I see an idea there, Pulp Fiction classics, publish them via Patreon or on a website charging £5 a month subscription with 2-4 new uploads each month. Or sell them individually.
Please Note: I suggest that you check the Project Gutenberg License before downloading and selling the material found on their website though.
Matt Furey, an American who was passionate about wrestling, found a home study course on catch wrestling along with other men’s health books in the public domain.
He had them turned into his own products which he now sells for hundreds of pounds each, resulting in him earning millions.
It is not just books that are in the public domain. I have seen several stalls at indoor markets which were selling CDs and DVDs of old time radio shows and B&W films.
In the US, any film from before 1923 are in the public domain. After 1923, public-domain challenges arise when the copyright is not renewed.
I image that the market for radio shows and films dating back pre World War 2 is declining fast, but there are people who still sell them.
A few years ago I saw someone selling CDs on eBay of recordings of live BBC radio broadcasts stating that because the license holder was paying the BBC and the PRS (Performing Rights Society) fee had been paid for by the BBC, the live broadcast was in the public domain.
I cannot say whether this is legally true or not… but they were selling a lot of CDs of live broadcasts at that time.
The public domain is an incredible resource ready and waiting for you to plunder. I hope this report has given you food for thought and some ideas.
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