eBay is a great marketplace for buyers and sellers. While I don’t remember my first purchase on eBay, I do remember my first sale… a Brother thermal paper fax machine I no longer needed. That was in 1997.

Since that time, I’ve purchased hundreds of items on eBay and sold 10’s of thousands of items under various user ids. Some were hobby related and some were business related. And I still buy and sell there today.

But what used to be lots of fun has lately become a bit of a chore. Continue reading »

The folks over at the Pirates of the Public Domain have recently released a tremendous report about public domain comic books. It seems that quite a few of the old classics are in the public domain AND available digitally in a few places online.

The report (which is free) can be downloaded by clicking on the title here: How To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun & Profit. The report is in pdf format and will load directly in your browser when you click on the link. (Alternatively if you want to save it on your computer, just right click on the link and select “save as” from the menu.) Continue reading »

People are fascinated by history documentaries - stories of wars, biographies of important historical figures, everyday life in well known cities, evolution of technology and many other aspects of our rich collective history. This fascination is evident by all the channels on television devoted to this sort of material including The History Channel, The Military Channel and many others.

And if you watch the documentaries with a critical eye (as opposed to a “be entertained” eye), you will begin to see how they are developed. You will see the way they handle scene transitions, working with still images as well as film clips, how the commentary and the images are weaved together to tell a compelling story. And if you watch enough of them, you would be able to fully extract the formula for creating your own documentary.

And thanks to the deluge of public domain film and photographic material that is now available digitally at no to low cost, acquiring all the pieces for a first rate documentary can be done on anyone’s budget. Continue reading »

One of the innovations of the internet is the ability of people to send electronic postcards to each other. These services allow people who are not advanced computer gurus to basically build a multimedia message that can include images, sounds and animations as well as their message and then send it to one or more friends.

While day to day email communications is good for most things, being able to send an e-postcard for someone’s birthday or because of a special event is a nice thing. It tends to bring a smile to the recipients face.

So what does all this have to do with the public domain?

There are many postcard software packages available in a variety of languages - many of which are free. And which include either the source code (which allows you to modify them) or include the ability to include your own images in the system. Continue reading »

Have you ever dreamed of producing your very own language training course but didn’t know how to go about it? If that describes you, do you think having an entire course that is in the public domain and can be used by you in any way you want could be helpful in making this dream a reality?

Well there is an entire website devoted to foreigh language courses in the public domain. These courses were developed by the Foreign Service Institute to train U.S. diplmatic corps to speak other languages and many of the courses are in the public domain. Thanks to the selfless efforts of many volunteers, many of the FSI courses have been digitized (both the manuals and the audio training portions) and made available for free from http://fsi-language-courses.com/. Continue reading »

Edward Curtis created a 20 volume set titled The North American Indian from 1907 to 1930. This set was published in a limited edition and sold by subscription. The lavishly illustrated volumes were printed on the finest paper and bound in expensive leather, making the price prohibitive for all but the most avid collectors and libraries. Subscriptions sold for about $3,000 in 1907; the price rose to about $4,200 by 1924.

The 20 volumes contain 2226 plates (images.) There are around 75 photogravure plates in each bound volume, with image sizes averaging 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 inches; each accompanying portfolio holds around 35 loose photogravure sheets, with image sizes averaging 12 by 16 inches. In total, there are 1506 plates in the bound volumes and 720 plates in the portfolios. Continue reading »

People like to be entertained while driving to and from work. They have many options… radio, satellite radio, talk radio and a wide variety of cds - from music cds to educational cds to audio books on cd.

The audiobook market is huge. They are sold at every bookstore in the country and available at most libraries for checkout.

All it takes to create an audiobook is to have the rights to use a book and the ability to convert it into spoken word. Continue reading »

eBay is a great source for finding just about anything. That also makes it a great source for finding public domain works that you can use for your own projects. This article will examine how to use eBay’s search feature to find potential public domain works that you can use.

I say potential works because you will still want to verify that the works in question are indeed in the public domain before using them. In other words, just because an eBay seller says a particular work is in the public domain does not necessarily mean that it is true. So you always want to take that little extra bit of time to verify before purchasing and using any works off eBay. Continue reading »

Copyright law can be confusing. Here are several common myths about copyright.

a. If it doesn’t have a copyright notice, it is not copyrighted

Sort of. After April of 1989, the US dropped the requirement to need a copyright notice to have copyright protection. Items prior to April of 1989 without a copyright notice may have lost protection but it is a very gray area as the Copyright Office allowed for corrections after publication In general, when seeking public domain products, it is best to stay away from gray areas as there is lots more material out there than you can ever use. Continue reading »

As a creator of physical products like CDs or DVDs, you may discover that you need a UPC code for your product(s) to be able to sell it in certain markets. For instance, Amazon requires a UPC code for CDs and DVDs.

So what is a UPC Code?

UPC is short for Universal Product Code. The UPC bar code was originally used in the grocery industry to allow price scanner and inventory automation. It was so successful in that industry, it quickly spread to almost all other industries. The UPC code is a series of numbers that is converted into a unique UPC barcode that is placed on a product. Continue reading »