A friend asked me a question yesterday that really made me stop and ponder a few things…
This question reminded me of some issues I had to deal with very early on in my career as an information marketer. As someone with an interest in using Public Domain content to create products, you may have pondered the answer to this same question at one point or another.
The question is specifically related to Public Domain comic books, but the same question could be applied to any Public Domain works that can be found online and downloaded for free ~ books, images, magazines, U.S. Government information, etc.
Here’s the question…
“This may seem stupid but I went to the <insert your favorite online Public Domain repository here> site and saw that I could download all types of Public Domain comic books. My question is if it is this easy for people to download these things, why would anyone pay me for Public Domain comic books?”
Behind the apparent simplicity of this question lies a BIG, important issue that’s really more of an issue with mental perception and how you perceive your own self-worth than actual reality.
Boiled down to it’s core and rephrased, this question really becomes…
“If People Can Download Public Domain Stuff For Free, Why On Earth Would They Buy It From Me?”
It’s not a stupid question at all – in fact, it’s a very good question that gets asked quite often and rightfully so.
If you don’t find your own answer to this question you’ll always find it nagging at you in the back of your mind and sabotaging everything you do with regards to your marketing efforts.
If you find yourself asking this same question, you’ve got to squash this bug as soon as possible. Not having worked out your own answer to this question will at best cause you to devalue your own products.
At worst, you could become totally paralyzed believing that you could never sell anything to anyone because you have unconsciously devalued your products to the point where they have no worth to either yourself or anybody else.
In the immortal words of Ice Cube – “check yo self before you wreck yo self”.
It’s all in how you view opportunity. You have to see things through the eyes of a marketer and entreprenuer. There are thousands of examples of people and companies making good money selling things that can be found elsewhere for free (or really inexpensively!).
Lots of smart marketers make money selling information that the U.S. Government gives away for free every day ~ see crazy-ass Matthew Lesko as just one example.
Many big publishing companies profit from repackaging and selling products based on Public Domain works, in many cases with exact facsimile reprints of Public Domain books that can be downloaded for free in digital format elsewhere ~ see Dover Publications as a more well-known example.
We personally know (and in many cases, work with) a good many information publishers that sell products based on Public Domain works of all kinds that can be downloaded for free at other websites.
The “key” is in not only positioning your products correctly for specific niche audiences, but also in being able to add clear VALUE to your product offerings.
I addressed a very similar question in the article, “How Do I Make Money With Public Domain Japanese Prints?” a while ago but I wanted to take a stab at it again using Public Domain books as the example this time.
First Things First – Reality Check
Not as many people know about the big online Public Domain repositories as you think. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, hardly anyone knows about them.
For instance…
On this site and in our other materials, both free and paid, we talk about the Internet Archive quite a bit…and for good reason – the Internet Archive hosts a massive repository of great Public Domain books, many of which are page-by-page scans, perfect for either selling as is or as using as the foundational content for all-new products (including compilations).
The Internet Archive (archive.org) has an Alexa Traffic Rank of 197 ~ the site gets a ton of traffic but…
I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that the vast majority of the traffic archive.org gets on a daily basis is heading straight for the “WayBack Machine” and is not even aware that the site hosts a huge amount of copyright-free material in its archives.
In comparison, a much smaller percentage of the traffic is actively involved with the archived materials – this traffic is there for a wide variety of reasons but profit generally isn’t one of them. Lastly, an even smaller percentage is made up of Public Domain Treasure Hunters like you and I – entreprenuers looking for content to republish in niche markets because we understand that Public Domain books can be repurposed for use in our businesses freely, ethically, and legally.
A lot of people first getting involved with Public Domain publishing make the mistake of believing that just because they know about a site and it’s Public Domain offerings, that the rest of the world surely must know about it as well.
Not even close…
According to the US Census Bureau, the world’s population is roughly 6.8 billion.
According the data published by Nielsen Online, the number of Internet users as of June 30th, 2010 is almost 2 billion.
What percentage of these 2 billion “users” visit archive.org to download free Public Domain books or even know it exists in the first place?
Who knows? But I guarantee you one thing ~ it’s a miniscule teeny, tiny, multiple-places-to-the-right-of-the-decimal-point fraction.
Now…Pop Quiz – what percentage of these 2 billion Internet users logon to the Internet to find information that pertains to their interests, hobbies, or passions?
Right! All of them!
Now consider the fact that in 2009, ecommerce sales in the U.S. alone reached $155 billion.
Forrester Research recently released a five-year forecast predicting this number to reach an estimated $250 billion by 2014.
Other statistics from the forecast stated that in 2009, 154 million people in the U.S. purchased something online (67% of the U.S. online population) and that roughly 6% of all retail sales in the U.S. took place online.
Granted – computers, apparel, and consumer electronics made up a large portion of these online sales (roughly 44%), with World of Warcraft and pornography probably taking up the other 56% (just kidding).
My point is ~ there’s a ton of opportuntity out there for making money by developing products using free Public Domain materials and aiming them squarely at very specific niche markets and you can do it without fear that you’ll never make any sales because the material you used to create your products can be found online for free.
If this thought has been holding you back ~ get over it!
It’s a BIG world out there and we’re playing on a global scale now, Bucko – get used to it, revel in it, embrace it!
If the above discussion wasn’t enough to get you over this “I’ll never sell it because I got it for free” thinking, here’s a few tips that’ll help you maximize the earning potential and perceived value of your products, making it a win-win situation for both yourself and your customers regardless of whether your source material is freely available elsewhere.
The odds that someone will buy your product and then discover later that they could have downloaded parts of your product elsewhere for free later are slim to none. The odds that they will complain even if they do somehow find out are even slimmer as long as you follow these guidelines…
Niche The **** Out of It
This is a no-brainer, but it’s important enough to discuss none the less.
When you are assembling a product, you are doing so with a particluar niche market in mind – or at least you should be.
Let’s say you want to target people that are interested in the history of locomotives (seriously, they’re out there!).
Then let’s say you go to archive.org and you find 20 great Public Domain books that outline and illustrate the history of trains, railroads, and locomotion. You could extract the best content from each of these books and create one killer locomotive history product.
The more effort you put into changing the format of the original material, the more you differentiate it from the free material, the more you distance yourself from the “free line”.
In other words, you may use the free material as your foundational content, but you end up creating something unique, something you can’t get for free, something you can’t get anywhere else.
This to me, is the ultimate form of Public Domain publishing – the true “Hybrid Content Theory” model. Using these 20 Public Domain books to create a DVD video product would be an extreme example because you’ve shifted the source material radically from text format to video format and in the process, created something totally unique in the marketplace.
Now let’s say that you take the absolute easiest route to Public Domain product creation using the same scenario…
Let’s say that you simply take these 20 Public Domain books about trains and compile them together into a CD based product. In other words, all you’ve done is combined the books together on one CD and market it to train history lovers.
Yes, each of the books can be downloaded for free (if one knows how and where) but…you’re still providing an immense value for people in your target market.
Don’t you think that you can and should be compensated for your time and effort in hunting these books down, reviewing them for quality, organizing them, and then making them available in one handy product?
Of course you should!
And people in your target market will love you for it.
You’ll be amazed at how much your customers will appreciate the fact that you’ve spent the time to bring them these resources.
You’ll even begin to be perceived as something of an expert in your market even though you didn’t actually write any of the books, all you did was find them and compile them into a product – it’s funny how that works but we see it all the time.
Add A Ton Of Value To Your Products
Another way to distinguish your products from the “freely downloadable” content is to purposely add a ton of value to your product for the end user.
Consider the answers to the following questions…
- What value can you add to the material?
- What unique spin can you put on your presentation of the material that would make a unique product offering?
- What’s your secret recipe for adding more “flavor”?
- How can you position your product offering so that it stands out as really being something special and worth paying for? How will you “position” it to your target market?
- There’s a good story behind every product – what’s yours?
As mentioned earlier, changing up media formats is a great way to add value.
Adding attractive bonus material to your product is another way…
This bonus material can simply consist of more great, related Public Domain content or it can be something you’ve created yourself. You can take this as far as you want…
Let’s say you managed to record a 60 minute interview with an expert in the history of locomotion and inlcuded it as a bonus with your train product. Wouldn’t that be a tremendous value-adder?
Even if you just created a simple screen-saver featuring pictures of old trains or maybe an image library viewable via a thumbnail gallery – anything you can do to add value works.
Think about what would thrill your customers, then provide it…and you can’t go wrong.
Make It Easy To Consume
Make it extremely easy and convenient for your customers to not only order your product but also to actually use your product. No muss, no fuss.
Hand them everything on a silver platter and make product delivery an absolute no brainer. Drop it in there lap and make it brain-dead simple. To the average computer user, downloading and viewing these books is kind of a pain in the butt.
Your average non-marketing person doesn’t want to screw around with this stuff. Most people don’t want to have to become technical wizards just to read a few vintage books on a topic they are interested in. That sort of takes the fun out of it.
If you make it super easy for them to download and read on their computer or you ship them something in physical format they’ll eat it up (and have no problem spending their lunch money with you either).
For instance, if you are providing a CD product, take the time to create a nice auto-run navigation menu that presents your customers with direct links to all of the content on the CD, making it very easy for them to get to the material.
The easier you can make it for your customers to consume your product, the happier and more satisifed they’ll be.
Make It More Attractive
Most times, people make decisions based on how attractive a product is, especially when making comparisons. This is human nature, work with it.
I’ve seen it over and over again. When designing your product packaging – always judge a book by its cover. For instance, if you are creating a product based on Public Domain comic books – if you take 10 Public Domain comic books, combine them together into one omnibus edition, and design a killer, vibrant, dynamic and exciting cover for it I guarantee you that it will attract more attention (and generate more sales) than anything you can download for free any day of the week.
Just simply designing fresh, attractive cover art for your product will immediately make it stand apart from anything you can download for free. People automatically equate presentation with quality and are happy to pay for quality.
Sounds crazy but it’s true, seen it over and over again.
Take the same Public Domain book, present one with an ugly cover and one with a gorgeous cover – all other things being equal with both books holding the exact same content, the book with the gorgeous cover will sell many more copies – even at twice the price!
The lesson here – make your stuff pretty! This is a supreme “value-adder” on it’s own.
Final Thoughts…
Don’t ever assume that you can’t sell something just because it’s available for free somewhere else. If you let this kind of thinking paralyze you, you’ll never sell a thing.
Get creative and figure out how you can put a “spin” on your Public Domain project and make it irresistibly attractive. So what if the same info can be downloaded somewhere else for free? Most of the time people don’t buy into your product anyway, they buy into YOU.
Just picture your ideal customer and what would thrill them to no end. If you were that person what would you get excited about buying? Create your perfect customer’s dream product and gear everything you do towards them.
Trust me – your customers will love it!
I’ve sold thousands of products in a plethora of different niche markets and never once have I had someone come back and say, “Hey, I just found out I can download this book for free at archive.org – gimme my money back!”
It just doesn’t happen. The trick is to inject yourself into your products and make them something completely new and unique – no one can do it like you can!
My advice is to strap on your entrepreneurial goggles, flex your mighty marketing muscles, and rephrase the question from “Why would anyone buy something from me that that they could download for free somewhere else?” to…
“How can I add so much value to this thing and use it to create such a powerful product offering that people will be falling all over themselves to hand me money and feel exited about doing it?”.
You can tell yourself that “no one will buy this Public Domain stuff” if you want to – and you’d be right…
Or you can ignore that little doubtful voice in your head and sell the heck out of it anyway just like I and many others have been doing for years!
It’s all in the way you choose to look at things…
P.S. – Shortly after releasing this article, I received a comment that manages to capture so eloquently in just three sentences the main point I was clumsily trying to make throughout this entire article and I wanted to bring it to the forefront here in the hopes that it will inspire and help you as much as it has inspired me…
Print this out and tape it to your monitor! Them’s wise words…
Read more about Why Would Anything Old Enough To Be In The Public Domain Be Worth Anything Today?
About The Author:
 Logan Andrew is an online entrepreneur, information publisher, and author that has been using Public Domain material to create profitable products and businesses since 2001. He is also co-author of "The Public Domain Treasure Hunter's Survival Kit" available here. For more info Logan, click here. |
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello Logan,
I am a little confused about being able to use the Internet Archive. I went there and read their Terms of Use. It stated that I must agree NOT to use the content for commercial use! And, if I use any content in a report, I must give them credit! Could you please read the Terms and let me know if I am reading them wrong? I know there must be a way to use these Public Domain ebooks for profit, since they are, well, in the “Public Domain.” Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated.
Hi, Logan,
Great post! It really made my day!
I have a few thoughts on this as well. I do publish public domain works that can be found for free on-line, (in most cases,) but I don’t make them drastically different. However, I do add a foreword at the beginning of every book, I design the covers, I restore the images and text, and sometimes I even decorate the chapter headings a little, (by adding a graphic, or changing the fonts to look more eye-catching). I think that even something as basic as this works very well, so the bottom line is, while I agree with what you say in your post, I think that sometimes basic alterations can go a long way.
What do you think?
Oh, and another thing…
I think it’s much more crucial to change the product more drastically if the product is cliche. The competition involved in such products is very steep, and making it newer and fresher would give you the upper hand.
Let me know what you think of my insights.
Great post, Logan. There are quite a few publishing companies out there that reprint public domain books– Kessinger is one that comes to mind. I bought one of their books once, and the quality of the images was horrible.
Also, anyone who downloads much of the stuff from archive.org will be disappointed with the quality of the document. Same with much of the stuff in Google books. No one proofreads the text for OCR errors and much of it is unreadable. I think that by revising and fixing up a public domain image or text, I am not only providing a superior product but also convenience as well. Many people don’t have the time, desire, knowledge, or perseverance to sort through the tons of material online. If we become the one stop place for quality information in our niche, we are really providing a huge service for the people who are interested in our area.
Hi Logan
I also sell public domain products in the UK mainly on Ebay at the moment and earn a good second income. You published an article in your newsletter recently giving a great source for PD books in a particular niche which I thought was fantastic… and subsequently created a book compilation on CD…which has sold quite well.
My point is that even though you sent out details of this product to thousands of your subscribers…only 1, in the UK is selling this product on Ebay…me…it just shows that even when you give people the ‘money’ on a plate very, very few take action and do something with it.
Thats why its not difficukt to succeed selling PD material..there’s so little competition…most people read the info you provide and DO NOTHING with it…then moan that it’s free anyway and has no value…what a shame they can’t change their mindset.
have a great day and keep up the good work
John
@ John
John, your reply is excellent. I would love to find out more about your CDs. Would you kindly send me note at sbraich AT GMail dot com ?
Thanks
Sukh
Hi Karen,
“I think that by revising and fixing up a public domain image or text, I am not only providing a superior product but also convenience as well. Many people don’t have the time, desire, knowledge, or perseverance to sort through the tons of material online. If we become the one stop place for quality information in our niche, we are really providing a huge service for the people who are interested in our area.”
This is beautiful and it magnificently captures the essence of what I was trying to say. You have managed to capture so eloquently in just three sentences the main point I was clumsily trying to make throughout this entire article.
Well done, and thank you! You hit the nail right on the head.
Thanks for the other comments as well…I have purchased just shy of a dozen books from Kessinger over the past few years and I have always been satisfied however, I generally buy them with an eye for the text content so I rarely pay attention to the images. It’s a shame that the images aren’t of better quality.
With regards to Google Books, I have to agree with you 100%, their scans leave much to be desired particularly in the image department.
With regards to archive.org, I know what you mean about the text. I ignore everything except the actual pdf downloads which I perform OCR on myself. The links to text versions are pretty much useless garbage (unless it’s linking to a Gutenberg text of course). I prefer the stuff that hasn’t been scanned by Google, the 300 dpi scans digitized by Microsoft and others. I’ve found some true gold in these 300 dpi scans – not just text but images as well. In a 300 dpi scan, I’ve found that the images import nicely into Photoshop for cleanup and reproduction at a high-res.
“Also, anyone who downloads much of the stuff from archive.org will be disappointed with the quality of the document.”
Based on my experience, I have to disagree with this statement. I guess it all depends on what you’re trying to do with the stuff you find.
Thanks Karen!
Hi Jack, I agree with you 100%.
Basic alterations, drastic alterations, as long as you are doing something to add to the value of the original work, it’s all good. Sometimes little tweaks like you mention are really all that’s needed. Plus, using the methods you are describing typically qualifies your version for its own form of copyright protection.
I appreciate your insights, very well put.
I salute you as a fellow Public Domain Treasure Hunter!
Thanks for sharing this John. It’s much appreciated and you are an inspiration.
I am constantly running into things (as I would imagine you are as well), that make my heart skip a beat because I know how valuable they can be to the right person and I can’t believe nobody else has packaged it up into a product yet.
As you said, it just goes to show there’s so little competition as long as you stay away from mainstream works (the same ones everyone and there brother tries to sell). There’s so much amazing stuff out there sitting around collecting virtual dust just waiting to be polished up and put into the marketplace!
It’s all about uncovering those gems that appeal to specific niches – they eat ‘em up and are happy to pay a premium to do so.
Thanks again John!
I’m extremely happy to be of service. Let me know if you ever need my assistance and I’m there for you.
Hi Regina,
If a book you find on archive.org is Public Domain, you are free to use it however you wish. I’ll explain more about this soon because I have been getting a ton of questions about this lately so I’ll be devoting a whole article to this topic in the very near future (hopefully this week).
Logan
Hi,
I wanted to clarify something if that’s ok.
The books that are public domain but have been placed on archive.org and other archiving sites are public domain. Just because someone placed them there, as long as they are not altered in some way (added to in some creative way), then they are still public domain right?
I sold some of these public domain books on one cd to one person on ebay. They then appealled to ebay for a refund saying I was not an “authorised seller” and I had “stolen the books off the net” and ebay decided to give a refund after the buyer must have found the books are available in the public domain. Of course I am an authorised seller of public domain books, anyone can be. So the buyer got to keep the disk of the compilation I spent ages making up, and he got refunded the postage too. I suspect this will be retrieved from my paypal account. He posted something weird in my feedback such as eBay contacted”intellectual property rights owner…to remove…listing” archive “you certify your use…will be noncommercial” well.. the content is public domain? This could be part of ebay’s “keep the buyer happy” approach but the damage has been done in my feedback where I am labelled “not authorized” and “stole from the internet” …
(I am presently trying to have this removed).
My daughter is doing library studies.. she assures me that public domain books are not copyrighted (old books). It’s the time and effort that go into compiling packs for people to buy thats worth a small return. I too recently bought some packs of public domain books myself from overseas.. they are all nicely put on a DVD and I just don’ t have the time to chase all these titles myself. I have seen some other packs in the UK I want for myself too (for personal use). This is why people pay for packs of public domain books.. we don’t have time to sift though hundreds of thousands of books..a pack on just what we want is fine. Time is money.
Cheers, and comments most welcome.
Margo
Hi Margo,
“The books that are public domain but have been placed on archive.org and other archiving sites are public domain. Just because someone placed them there, as long as they are not altered in some way (added to in some creative way), then they are still public domain right?”
Absolutely correct – see this article, “Is It OK To Use Public Domain Books From The Internet Archive For Commercial Purposes?” for my personal thoughts on that.
“I sold some of these public domain books on one cd to one person on ebay. They then appealled to ebay for a refund saying I was not an “authorised seller” and I had “stolen the books off the net” and ebay decided to give a refund after the buyer must have found the books are available in the public domain. Of course I am an authorised seller of public domain books, anyone can be. So the buyer got to keep the disk of the compilation I spent ages making up, and he got refunded the postage too. I suspect this will be retrieved from my paypal account. He posted something weird in my feedback such as eBay contacted”intellectual property rights owner…to remove…listing” archive “you certify your use…will be noncommercial” well.. the content is public domain? This could be part of ebay’s “keep the buyer happy” approach but the damage has been done in my feedback where I am labelled “not authorized” and “stole from the internet” …
(I am presently trying to have this removed).”
What a nightmare! My gut instincts are telling me that you got setup by another ebay seller, probably someone selling a similar, competitive product. It’s obvious to me that this person knew just a little “too much” about how your product was created. With all honesty, this is always going to be a potential (albeit, extraordinarily rare) scenario any time you are creating products by simply downloading a collection of Public Domain books and selling them on CD with no modification of any kind. Quite frankly, I used to cringe at the thought of creating products in this fashion until my eyes were opened to the profitability of such things especially after being exposed to what Steven Poke and others are doing.
I would fight tooth and nail to get that unjust negative feedback removed. It really bothers me that this guy took his grievances directly to ebay instead of addressing you personally – this is one more thing that convinces me that you got tangled up with another seller trying to derail and discredit you. I hope this awful experience hasn’t stopped you from proceeding forward – this guy is an example of the worst customer you could ever have but there’s still many, many times more people out there that want and will genuinely enjoy what you have to offer.
Just out of curiosity – when you created the product, did you remove all indentifying marks from the books?
“My daughter is doing library studies.. she assures me that public domain books are not copyrighted (old books).”
And she is correct – Public Domain by definition, is the opposite of being copyright protected.
“It’s the time and effort that go into compiling packs for people to buy thats worth a small return. I too recently bought some packs of public domain books myself from overseas.. they are all nicely put on a DVD and I just don’ t have the time to chase all these titles myself. I have seen some other packs in the UK I want for myself too (for personal use). This is why people pay for packs of public domain books.. we don’t have time to sift though hundreds of thousands of books..a pack on just what we want is fine. Time is money.”
Absolutely, I agree with everything you’ve said here. One small point though – “It’s the time and effort that go into compiling packs for people to buy thats worth a small return.” – remove the words “small return” from your vocabulary. These words signify a method of thinking that automatically devalues your products and believe it or not, anyone considering buying a product from you will pick up on that. Just something to think about, you’re time invested in product creation and the products themselves are worth considerably more than just a “small return”. If you maintain the belief that they’re not worth much, so will your customers.
Thanks Margo!
Hi Logan,
Thanks so much for your comments and I’m sure you are as amazed as I am that the complainant who bought a pack from me referred to archive org as holding the intellectual copyright holder of lapsed copyright books. My daughter and I both have stores on ebay (we live in the same home) and since this trouble started both of our ebay stores have received zero sales (I’m wondering if our accounts have been frozen). The feedback on my store from the USA purchaser was horrendous.
I had very good feedback until then. The books I had in my pack were lovely books and anyone interested in that topic would be happy to have them (as the person with the feedback below him showed..having left great feedback for the same pack). I do edit the pdf books but I may have missed one (there were a lot of books). Still, others have bought the same pack with no complaints so, like you, I think this could be an attack to have our store/s closed down for selling “stolen books” (which are not stolen at all, they are copyright free) by a competitor. If they can do that to our stores, they can do it to anyone elses.. just by presenting pdf books as being owned by archive.org (which they are not). All I can do is see what the outcome is.. I sent a statutory declaration and a follow up fax to ebay Australia but the complaint came from a buyer from ebay USA .
Cheers, Margo
Hi All,
Well suddenly it seems I am receiving ebay sales again. Perhaps some decision has been made somewhere… who knows.
A little about me is that I love books and writing. I am presently undertaking a Post Grad writing course. I also have a great interest in copyright. In the past I saw a USA site copy a whole old website of my daughter’s and put it online so suddenly a poem she wrote in High School came up on their site! Imagine how a parent feels seeing something like that happen. So I got it removed after learning in the fast lane about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (you can’t copy whole works of living people on line without their permission etc). I share the passion of those who look at old literature as precious and worth merit … just because things were written a long time ago doesn’t devalue them. We are still reading Shakespeare today and a whole lot more.
Thankyou to Logan for promoting old works and giving them the value they deserve. People who resell and promote old literature for whatever reason are actually doing the world a favour. In the past there were great, world changing ideas and ideas and creative writing that we still love today. I’m an older person and I still love re-reading some of the older pieces of literature which are timeless and priceless. Let’s keep the past alive.. because without the past (through literature and all) we wouldn’t have the wealth of information and stories we have now.
Thanks again Logan for your support of the Public Domain and the promotion of past works of literature and other publications.
Cheers, Margo
Hi Margo,
Well, it looks like my threats to eBay have paid off! (just kidding!)
You’ve been doing this long enough to know that these mysterious sales slumps happen sometimes, just part of the game. That’s why it’s so important to have as many sales channels and income streams setup as you can.
Thanks for your thoughts here, I really appreciate them…and you!
Hey Logan,
Just dropping by to let everyone know that ebay removed the negative feedback and follow up feedback from my page. It was awful being publicly accused of stealing from the net (as if I had stolen someone’s copyrighted work) and also having someone imply that archive.org (which is not the only place I source books) was an intellectual copyright holder of old books. If this happens to anyone else, don’t accept false accusations of theft from ebay or anyone else.
I did send ebay a reference to this site too (including the page where the founder of archive.org says that copyright lapsed books on their site can be used for any purpose). Hopefully this will help others who are selling in niche markets on ebay too.
This may also be a timely reminder not to just sell in one place (put up a website selling your own products and sell on other venues and don’t just rely on ebay).
Cheers, Margo
Hi Margo,
Excellent! Thanks for letting us know what happened there.
Also – “This may also be a timely reminder not to just sell in one place (put up a website selling your own products and sell on other venues and don’t just rely on ebay).” – this is wise advice, eBay should be a strategic part of your business…not your entire business.