As you may know, the term 'public domain' means that a work is copyright-free; hence, it is free for the public to use. All material created and published in the United States before the year 1923 belong to the public domain. The same rule exists in several other countries as well. However, in some countries, such as the United Kingdom, a work is placed in the public domain only seventy years after the demise of the author.

There are many methods (offline and online) you can use to track down high quality public domain books. For instance, your local library and second-hand book store are great places to start looking for texts that have expired copyrights. If you happen to live near a university library, make sure you pay them a visit and take time to browse through their vast collection of titles - who knows, you might stumble across some valuable public domain books that you can then utilize for your own projects.

If you prefer to search online instead, here are two fantastic resources you may want to check out:-

* Project Gutenburg http://www.gutenberg.org/

Considered the granddaddy of all public domain resource sites, Project Gutenburg contains a massive index of over 10,000 free ebooks from Shakespeare and Alice in Wonderland to Milton and Aesop's Fables. You'll also find plenty of other high quality texts on a wide range of topics - eg: martial arts, knitting, cookery, gardening, etc. They've also assembled a sizable collection of foreign-language books.

The material is available in various formats including PDF (the most popular), plain text (.txt) and plucker (can be read on your PDA). By the way, the latter is a free piece of software. You may sort through the listings by language, author, title, top 100 or recently posted. You also have the option of searching their database by filling out certain form fields such as title, author name, language and so on.

A word of caution though...if you're planning on using the PG trademark to use public domain books for commercial purposes, it's always a good idea to first seek their approval before going ahead with your project.

* Authorama http://www.authorama.com/

This site is a classic book lover's delight! Contains a ton of best selling classic public domain books in XHTML format. You'll find works by Marcel Proust, Rudyard Kipling, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde...and the list goes on.

Now that you know how to search for public domain ebooks and digital texts, let's explore how you can use them for your own projects:-

Well, for starters, since they are copyright-free and in the public domain, you're free to distribute copies of the material by disk, in electronic format, in CD and DVD format... basically, in any format of your choice. You may also sell them for profit! In fact, many folks are currently making good money selling classic fiction ebooks on eBay. In addition to this, you could select a public domain book on a popular topic (eg: golf), edit its contents and re-package it in a different format to make it a new and unique product. (The best part is you can have it copyrighted under your name!). You may then set up a website, publish a sales letter and sell this product to interested prospects.

Feel free to browse the web for more public domain money making ideas.

And with that, we wrap up this article on how to find and use public domain ebooks and digital texts!

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