When it comes to the types of public domain projects you can create, the limit is really your imagination. Let’s look at seven different ways you can use public domain materials to generate a stream of income.
- You can republish a public domain book as is. You can print it physically or offer it in electronic format. If you offer the book in an electronic format, packaging it as a PDF file, like this course, is the best way to go. If you choose to offer a print book, you have a few options. You can print it yourself on demand and use inexpensive binding kit (spiral binding) that you can buy at any office supply store to make a professional looking book. You can go to a local printer and do very short runs of the book. They will even do the binding for you. Typically it will be spiral bound on such low volume runs, as it is quite cost effective when producing a few dozen at a time. You can approach a specialty printing company and print a larger quantity in whatever type of binding you like. This is the most cost-effective way, but you have to be ready to buy and inventory a large number of books to make it worth your while. The last time we did this, the efficiency point was 1000 books, but this was in 1995 and more options are available today.
- Audiobooks – Did you know that there is a website that has public domain audiobooks that you can download and use however you want? In fact, as of June 2008, they reached 1,500 books in their catalog of audiobook downloads. There is no cost to use this amazing service. You can learn more about this project at http://librivox.org Also, don’t think you’re limited to what’s on the Librivox site. Any public domain book can be turned into an audio version, packaged, and sold to interested customers.
- Stock Photo Collections: Creative people of all stripes are always looking for collections of additional royalty-free stock photos that they can use for projects. With literally millions of photos in the public domain, you can assemble thematic groups of photos and offer them as stock photo collections to interested clients. You can package them in various ways. The easiest way is to put them on CD or DVD and sell them in that format. But you could also offer a digital download site where people pay for each photo they download, or a membership site where they pay a one-time or monthly fee to access all the photos in your collection.
- Clip Art Collections: Clip art is basically line art or simple drawings. As with previous stock photography collections, clip art collections are very popular and can be delivered in a variety of ways. A great example of using public domain clip art (or really any public domain material) in print books is Dover Publications. They have a huge catalog of books: republished public domain works and compilations of public domain materials.
- Prints/Signs/Maps – Prints are a very large area of the public domain and with modern printing equipment, you can actually run a highly profitable print shop from home. Prints can come in all sizes, from postcard-sized to huge posters, and can be offered on a variety of papers and materials, even canvas. So what can be printed? The list is almost endless. You can print civil war photographs, old maps, NASA space mission images, military images, fine art posters. You can even combine image elements and create your own unique printable images, such as a series of motivational posters with moving scenes and motivational quotes at the top of the poster.
- Calendars: Every year, people buy millions of calendars on a wide variety of topics. Why not take some of the public domain photos or artwork you have access to and design and sell a calendar for a specific niche? For example, you could make a WWII D-Day calendar with photos of D-Day related events with descriptive captions below. Or a generic WWII calendar with photos and captions of the most famous WWII events and brief historical highlights in the various date boxes highlighting important days of the war?
- Cards – There are a variety of cards that can be made using public domain images. These include postcards, playing cards, flash cards, sports cards, etc. The key to success in the card business is, again, designing the cards with an interest that you have identified. For example, the Library of Congress has a large collection of baseball cards from around 1900 online. An enterprising person could use them to make decks of playing cards and trade them during baseball season. Many people who like baseball play cards and would be delighted to have such a unique pack of cards to enjoy while playing the game. Or maybe you could reissue the cards as a limited collector’s set. Or use them as the basis of an early baseball trivia game. Or a set of postcards. As you can see, there are several ways to use public domain image cards to create interesting products.
