Quite possibly, you’ve been told of public domain publishing as a pathway to earning money online.  I want to tell you about a twist on it that can have you bringing in extra revenue almost right away.

First, though, the basics. As you may know, many books and other materials have entered the public domain (fallen out of copyright) and can be republished, in any form, by any person who wants to do so. In the United States most works published through the year 1923 are considered now to be public domain (”PD”).

If you discover a PD book you believe others would pay for if it were republished, you could reprint it as a physical book and sell copies through eBay, Amazon or your own web site. Some enterprising individuals have done this with old correspondence courses and other non-fiction, how-to type materials from years ago.

Or, you could package your PD discovery as an e-book and make it available for downloading, for a price. This is probably the more usual way that people are bringing in money now from the public domain.  Once again, non-fiction, how-to and self-improvement are the most profitable subjects.

Now about that little twist I mentioned.  It involves making PD books freely available on the web, but with advertising on their pages. So, strictly speaking you are not selling books, but ad space.

A few years a guy named Steve Smith heard about an obscure little book from 1892 that combined a time-travel-type tale with a novel about golf. Its title was Golf In the Year 2000.

Afer a bit of searching, he was able to find a copy of this book for just $10. He scanned the pages, converted them with OCR software, and posted the whole book on a web site he registered just for this purpose.

He went further than that, though. On his site’s pages, he surrounded the book’s text with Google AdSense and affiliate merchant ads. He then made money when visitors clicked on the AdSense ads or purchased things through his affiliate links. By the way, if you’re wondering, you can view his site at www.golf-in-the-year-2000.com.

Steve’s online edition of Golf In the Year 2000 attracts a steady flow of golf enthusiasts, science fiction fans, Victorian literature lovers and the simply curious, he says. And the ads on his pages bring him money!

This is certainly an idea that could be copied by others. Public-domain sources are abundant nowadays.  You might be able to find a suitable book in one of the many web-based collections, preferably something that not many other people have discovered yet.

One good thing with this idea is that the book you showcase (and use to earn ad revenue) need not be confined to non-fiction or how-to.  As with Steve’s weird little golf/science fiction find, it can just be something that will attract visitors to your site, for the sheer novelty if nothing else.

You could also look in used-book stores to try to find something rare enough not to have made it to the Internet at all.  In that case you will probably need to buy a scanner and some OCR software to get the text into your computer.

Public domain publishing is indeed a potentially lucrative field.  And, how you “repurpose” your PD finds is entirely up to you.  That’s what makes it so much fun, as well as profitable.

This method of publishing public domain material is described at some length in this article, along with suggestions for further reading.

If you are interested in selling actual used books online, as on Amazon or eBay, there’s a downloadable report available that shows a new and mega-profitable way to do it.  Check it out here or read an excellent review of it at Can You Still Make Money Selling Used Books on Amazon?