Did you know that you can LEGALLY make some serious money by taking something that someone created a long, long time ago, repackaging it, and selling it yourself?
Copyright exists on everything that you create. If you compose music, create art, design a logo, or even take a photograph, you have the right to choose what happens to that creation and nobody can take your creation without your permission. You don’t have to do anything other than prove that you are the one who created something in order to own a copyright.
However… those copyrights don’t last forever! Copyright laws are kind of different in different places, and I’m by no means a lawyer…
There are many places on the Internet where you can go and download a book that’s already been written and you can do whatever you want with it! Legally! Isn’t that insane? Ain’t capitalism grand?
You could go and create your own version of any of the following:
- Frankenstein
- Romeo and Juliet
- Dracula
- Alice in Wonderland
- Sherlock Holmes
- Peter Pan
- The Wizard of Oz
- heck, even Winnie the Pooh is in the public domain now! (but watch out if you’re going anywhere near Disney…)
Sources of Public Domain books:
https://www.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about/free_books.html
https://archive.org/details/texts
You’re going to pick a book and design a cover (front and back) and lay it out. What you do with it from there is up to you… just don’t get me involved!
When it comes to the layout portion, I recommend finding one that has a PLAIN TEXT version. For example, here’s a link to download Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I used to love Mark Twain when I was a kid. I was a weird kid.
The plain text version looks like this
I can download the whole book just by pressing Ctrl + S on my keyboard!
That book has been published countless times by countless jokers looking to make a buck!
Now, I do not expect you to read the book or have already read the book. You can pick whatever you want. I’m not about to read the thing and make sure that you’ve portrayed the book accurately, so feel free to pick whatever you want and have fun with it. The thing is, you have to come up with your own design and use images that are not protected by copyright.
Photos and images can be used from Creative Commons sources such as:
- Unsplash
- The Noun Project
- AI/Firefly
- Creative Commons
- or just take photos and create images yourself!
How & where you create this is kind of up to you! Keep in mind that sometimes you need to revise your design, adapt it for physical or digital releases, or your book gets turned into a movie or a stage production (hint, hint…)
Your first job is to pick a book and design a cover and the back of the book, which usually has a little summary of the book and perhaps some testimonials from others who have read the book.
Ideal dimensions for ebook cover files are 2,560 pixels in height x 1,600 pixels in width.
Examples (although not necessarily good or creative ones…):
