I’m sure you’ve heard numerous times to always provide a PDF with your audio products (probably from me) or provide an MP3 with your PDF so your customer has more options. I’m assuming you’ve probably heard that you should consider using public domain texts to help jump start your ebook writing as well. Well, the wonderful people at Mindex International LTD has taken both of those points and created an iPad app called vBookz.
vBooks allows you to not only read public domain books on your iPad, but it will also read it to you using its speech-to-text technology. This is a perfect example of repurposing content and providing a unique spin on what you’re offering. They’ve used a very similar interface to the iPad’s iBooks application to display texts from the Project Gutenberg public library, added in voice and packaged it under a new name called vBooks. They added a few new goodies to improve the user experience with the application like a cute little red ribbon bookmark, magnifying glass for the text so you can read along with it if you like.
In case you didn’t know, you are free to use public domain text and create a product. Find a public domain document, repackage it in an interesting way, and there you have a great product of your own for sale! Check out Tony Laidig’s Blog – he gives a lot of free information about profiting from public domain works.
Follow me on Twitter: MarthaGiffen
Gwen, Thanks for such clever ideas! Tony Laidig is the number one go-to person regarding the pubic domain. I love his stuff. Thanks for sharing
Martha Giffen´s last blog ..A Blog-A-Day Will Win The Game
Follow me on Twitter: marypat_fitz
Gwen
Great topic. I am always looking for information. I have use pubic domain info in the past. I just forgot. Thanks for the reminder.
Blessings, Mary Pat
Follow me on Twitter: marypat_fitz
Gwen,
Sorry, I needed to do a tiny url for my blog. Ooops!
Blessings, Mary Pat
Follow me on Twitter: melaniekissell
Is there no end to your repertoire, Gwen?! You never cease to amaze me with what you’re going to come up with next and post on your blog.
Public Domain is something I know very little about and it sounds like I need to get up to speed! So I requested a copy of Tony’s report and I have a feeling I’m about to get educated on the subject.
Have you used Public Domain to create any of your info products?
Thanks!
Melanie
#blog30
Melanie Kissell´s last blog ..Tweet Longer and Add Some Oomph
Follow me on Twitter: gwenatanner
Hi Melanie, A long long looooong time ago I looked into creating a product out of the old nursery rhyme books. Then I found a lot of public domain videos and (now that you reminded me) started a multicultural website for teachers – I don’t even remember the name. Just one of my many projects. I need to look it up to see if I still own it LOL But after a while I just moved on into other things and havent had much time to research more interesting public domain works.
I need to get look back into it because it’s a time saver and a good way to “rescue” old goodies outside of the business niche.
Gwen
Follow me on Twitter: HarryHumorous
Hi Gwen,
I have to look into the public domain treasure chest to see what I can find. Thanks so much for putting this back on the table as a place that we can find opportunities of creating products without recreating the wheel.
All the best,
Kevin
Inspiring Speaker Kevin Thompson´s last blog ..The Art of Selling Yourself
Follow me on Twitter: gjsuap
Gween, another great idea!! I realy enjoy visiting your blog. I learn new things every dat.
Gonzalo J. Suárez´s last blog ..Fascination – {F} Test
Follow me on Twitter: mywebgal
Hi Gwen,
vBooks sounds really cool but better yet, the ideas you gave us. Love it.
It’s funny that you mentioned in the comments that you had an idea of creating a product out of public domain nursery rhymes. I actually tried something like that. I had a site back in 1996 or 7 called “AlreadyReadyBooksForKidz.com” LOL!
Deb Augur´s last blog ..Microsoft Windows 7: Bite Me!
Follow me on Twitter: gwenatanner
Deb that’s a cool domain LOL We could have JV’d on that back then if we knew each other! LOL
Gwen