Can you scan and sell old books on Amazon?

[titanium]

Yesterday I was browsing Amazon and, finding a book with an interesting title but by an author I'd never heard of, I clicked on "Look inside" and found it was a scan of a book published in 1902. On Amazon it is listed as a new publication, self-published under Createspace (or whatever it's called). The Author's name on Amazon is the same as the original, but obviously this chap is long dead. I am aware that after a certain time (50 years? 75 years?) copyrights lapse, but does this mean that any Tom Dick or Harry can scan and publish an old book and list it for sale on Amazon? Can I scan all my old books and see if they sell? This seems very strange!

 

[Zumiweb]

Not all that strange... once copyright has expired, works are in the public domain, which means that you can indeed scan old books and try to sell that scanned version either electronically or as a reprint. Just search most old titles on Abebooks or Amazon and you'll see dozens of sellers doing just that.

Of course whatever you can do, so can others, so it's not a great business model unless you do thousands of titles or have access to some rare and simultaneously popular (!) titles.

UK copyright expires 70 years after author's death, and with various international conventions and agreements this generally means most works published before 1927 are now public domain. Similar limits apply to music, art, photographs etc. However, scanning a book well is quite an effort, although Google has a massive project going to scan millions of titles, so worth doing some research if you really think it's a business option. Interesting area, but I'm a chartered librarian, so I think a lot of really dull things are interesting...

If your web site is a good niche with a community than it might be quite a cunning option, hard to scale it up massively without a lot of time and money though.

 

[Carl S]

Not all that strange... once copyright has expired, works are in the public domain, which means that you can indeed scan old books and try to sell that scanned version either electronically or as a reprint. Just search most old titles on Abebooks or Amazon and you'll see dozens of sellers doing just that.

Of course whatever you can do, so can others, so it's not a great business model unless you do thousands of titles or have access to some rare and simultaneously popular (!) titles.

UK copyright expires 70 years after author's death, and with various international conventions and agreements this generally means most works published before 1927 are now public domain. Similar limits apply to music, art, photographs etc. However, scanning a book well is quite an effort, although Google has a massive project going to scan millions of titles, so worth doing some research if you really think it's a business option. Interesting area, but I'm a chartered librarian, so I think a lot of really dull things are interesting...

If your web site is a good niche with a community than it might be quite a cunning option, hard to scale it up massively without a lot of time and money though.

Excellent answer!

I remember a while back Amazon stating that they were starting a project to scan all out of copyright titles to sell directly on their market place. Lots of uproar from the publishers etc etc. But that's the size of what you would be dealing with.

 

[Zumiweb]

Thank you! Amazon are also trying to force print publishers to let them provide digitally scanned and printed copies of their *current* lists when the 'normal' print versions are out of stock - hence the current stand-off between Amazon and Hachette (and others) that has been all over the press in the last few weeks. And these are the in-copyright current list, so really threatening to the traditional publishers. OK for consumers if you don't mind quick printing and binding, not so great if books are more than just the content... but that is another topic.

Good case study in monopoly power in the market place though. If your books can't be seen on Amazon, you're in real trouble.

 

[David Griffiths]

You can already get electronic versions of out of copyright works from Project Gutenberg for nothing and many such titles are free on Kindle (and presumably other platforms)

Those will generally have been proof read and come in a clean format, so there won't be many people prepared to pay for an average quality scanned copy.

 

[Zumiweb]

True, and - starting in the early 1990s - an amazing early example of the Internet's potential for access to content, and crowdsourcing too as it was all done by volunteers. But Project Gutenberg only has 45,000 titles (OK, a slightly weird use of the word ONLY), with more available from partners. There are another 5 million or more to go at, and they are presented in a plain text format (which of course is now exactly right for kindles etc). Fine for a device if you just want clear content, but if you want some design, style and substance, you need someone to add some formatting, typesetting and binding. Which costs extra.

Again, as this is a business forum, the business opportunity probably isn't from these mainstream books which are available for pennies in multiple formats, but from finding niche publications of interest to communities of interest. Re-style a copy of Isaac Walton's 1653 classic 'The Compleat Angler' and sell it on your fishing tackle shop's website, and you might start to have something... if not money, then at least 'sticky content' for your site. Better yet, find something that isn't well known - a local history book, a manufacturer's catalogue, some esoteric instruction manual, and you might corner a little market, that can be grown in to a niche...

And yes, the previous poster's final point is perhaps the most critical - the scanning and presentation has to be really good quality to have any chance of success.