DAY 2

Secretly Make Money Using Other People’s Work for FREE – Public Domain Books

 

 

 

This is one of those little goldmines that many people are probably not aware of but has made fortunes for several people. If you have been studying internet marketing and wealth creation then I am sure you have heard of people like Brian Tracy, Bob Proctor, Armand Morin and the international bestselling DVD & book ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne.

Why have I singled these people out you may be wondering, well these people have made fortunes from legally using other peoples work. Bob Proctor, Rhonda Byrne and Brian Tracy have taken the teachings from the Public Domain book ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ by Wallace D. Wattles which was published around 1920 and created new products from it which generate huge sales

      

Bob Proctor took that book, gave it a new cover and turned it into a workable monthly course, he then also created ‘The SGR Club’ (The Science of Getting Rich) with Jack Canfield and Michael Beckwith, who also appeared in Rhonda Byrne’s ‘The Secret’ documentary DVD & book which was also based around ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ as well as other public domain books like Charles F. Hannel’s ‘The Master Key System’.

Joe Vitale (also from ‘The Secret’) published ‘The Master Key System’ for himself, they do give name checks to the original writers but they do not have to. Legally they can take those books and re name them if they so wish. Public domain books have been big business for many publishing houses. A public domain book is something that has fallen out of copyright and is available for anyone to publish without paying royalties or licensing fees.

Armand Morin in an interview mentioned that he released his own version of the classic H.G. Wells ‘The War of The Worlds’ on Amazon kindle and other online eBook stores once he heard that Hollywood were remaking the film with Tom Cruise. He acted on the ‘buzz worthiness of the film.

Public domain refers to a specific class of intellectual property that can be used, for free, without asking anybody else’s permission. In the United States, works fall into the public domain if:

· They were published in the United States before 1923.

· They were published in the United States between 1923 and 1978 without a valid copyright notice.

· The work was published in the United States between 1978 and March 1, 1989, without proper notice and registration.

· The work was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright that never got renewed.

There are some exceptions to these rules, so you can’t just assume something published in 1922 is free for you to use. The exceptions are:

· It was published between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice that was renewed prior to the expiration of a 23 year protection limit.

· It was published between 1963 and March 1, 1989 with a valid copyright notice.

· It was published or created any time after March 1, 1989.

Think that there’s hardly anything that meets the criteria, or that only very old items do? You’d be completely wrong.

There are millions of books, films, pictures and music in the public domain that are sat there waiting for you to use. Did you know that all pictures taken by NASA are put into the public domain for everyone to use? Using online printing companies it is possible to create notepads, T-shirts, table mats, coasters postcards and posters from NASA pictures along with many other types of pictures.

 

Think about Shakespeare and Charles Dickens for a moment, who receives the profits from their writings? They don’t, neither does their distant relatives. But the person who published the book does. There are so many companies publishing classic books and art that are in the public domain.

You cannot re print the Shakespeare that you find in your local bookstore as that has copyright to the publisher. It is a derivative copyright which covers the font, layout and design of their version however, changing the font and layout and creating your own looking copy becomes your own copyrighted edition.

 

Popular Public Domain Books

· Peter Pan (the play) and Peter and Wendy (the book), – James M. Barrie

· The Iliad, The Odyssey and other epic poetry – Homer

· The collective works of Shakespeare

· The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells

· Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

· Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

· Dracula – Bram Stoker

· The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

· The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

· Andersen’s Fairy Tales – Hans Christian Andersen

· Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

· Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

· Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

· Moby Dick, or, the whale – Herman Melville

· Aesop’s Fables – Aesop

· Alone – Edgar Allen Poe

· The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

· The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

· Roget’s Thesaurus – Peter Mark Roget

· Relativity: The Special and General Theory – Albert Einstein

· Kamasutra – Vatsyayana

· How to Live on 24 Hours a Day – Arnold Bennett

· On the origin of species – Charles Darwin

Is there enough content and ideas above for creating a library of sellable products? Many of these are classics and have been used to create big Hollywood films and the reason they are used is that Hollywood is free to use them as they wish; they can change and adapt the stories without asking for permission or paying any royalties or fees.

 

Public Domain Films & Cartoons

· Laugh-In Bloopers

· Marilyn Monroe Video Scrapbook

· Striptease Terror

· Presidential Blooper Reel

· Misadventures of Buster Keaton

· King Lear (Orson Welles version)

· Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon

· Attack of the 50-ft Woman

· A Farewell to Arms

· Black Dragons (with Bela Lugosi)

· Oliver Twist

· Betty Boop

· Casper the Friendly Ghost

· Felix the Cat cartoons

· The Three Stooges

· Teenagers from Outer Space

· House on Haunted Hill

· Little Shop of Horrors

· Behind the Mask of Zorro

· Shoot Out (with Gregory Peck)

If martial arts are your thing you will find many 1970s martial arts films in the public domain including several Jackie Chan films and documentaries with rare Bruce Lee footage.

Many websites and services have been created using public domain stuff and grown to become very successful. Is there anything you can do with this awesome goldmine of free to use stuff? – Andi the Minion