Hello viewers, in this video we will see how to edit a public domain work.
Let's go
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my name is Arun and I am so happy that you are here
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Let's start by seeing some ground rules while publishing a public domain book:
To publish a public domain book, we have to "differentiate" a book.
If illustrating, we must have 10 or more unique illustrations that are relevant to the book.
we will see what these terms mean in a few minutes.
Titles must be changed to show (Translated), (Annotated), or (Illustrated).
you have to declare that you are using a 'public domain' book in the ebook details/content page.
There are some actions which are NOT considered as "differentiations":
It could be "A linked table of contents", "Formatting improvements",
or any article that are
freely available on the Internet. Perhaps, we cannot just pick up content from say, Wikipedia or any other blog
and then copy and paste and show that as if it's our book
so, that's not allowed
And also just remember, to keep the original author name and put your name as the translator option (field)
as in here, the original author name should be under the author name here
and then you can add your name
under the 'contributors' section
as you can see here while adding your eBook details.
Let's now get into the details:
There are three options that KDP provides us with, to differentiate a book: which are
illustrate, annotate, and translate when it comes to publishing books that are in the public
domain.
The most common ones among these three are illustrating and translating options while
annotation is quite ambiguous to explain, if you ask me.
Even Amazon doesn't have a distinguishing metric to show that a book is annotated as
you can see that in the drop-down we don't have a separate 'annotated' option to select.
We have 'translator' option and the 'illustrator' option and there are some other
options over here, that could 'possibly' mean annotation (like editing for example) but we don't
want to work on guesses here as that has the risk of disqualifying the book while publishing
it.
- keep watching the video till the end and we will see a suitable example to learn more about annotations,
so by the end of this video you might get a good idea about what annotation really means.
Ok, so before we get into the details on 'how' to do these, let's first see 'what' these
exactly mean.
Illustrate: here's the dictionary definition.
"Illustrate" means 'a picture illustrating a book, newspaper, etc.'.
so, simply put, it means, 'to provide a book with pictures'.
or 'explain or make (something) clear by using examples, charts, pictures, etc.'.
So, this brings us to the next logical question of 'how to illustrate a book'.
we again have 3 options here:
create our own illustrations using a software
or hire a friend or a virtual assistant to create illustrations
or use cc0 (no copyright) public domain images. But just a warning here; this is a risky option)
Let's now see all these three in detail.
Number 1.
create our own illustrations using a software.
Inkscape is a free and open source software
that we can use to create our own illustrations to be added to the book.
there are plenty of video tutorials available over here:
That can help you learn how to create your own illustrations,
it might take a week or so to get used to
the software and become proficient in using
it but with practice you can start creating
your own original illustrations to add to any book.
This is the best way to illustrate a book.
Here's a pro tip
This option over here,
has community created Inkscape media that
are in public domain which can be downloaded.
You can go into community and then Gallery,
and then search media category by all, or choose whatever options you want
and choose 'Public Domain' over here.
Number 2
hire a friend or a virtual assistant to create illustrations
The second option is to hire a friend or remote assistant and pay 5$ to create illustrations
Sites like Fiverr.com can help you with that.
This ensures you can have original illustrations
for your book without any further worry.
you just have to explain them what you want; pay them their
fee and you get your High-Quality illustration done.
Here's an example from the Fiverr website
where, this person offers to create
Children book illustration as you can see here and for $5
you can get one-day delivery
with four revisions and a black and white sketch
and you also get the source file along with it.
There are plenty of options similar to this.
That you can find on Fiverr.com website.
The last option is using images from Pixabay.com or Unsplash.com,
for example, that offers copyright free public domain images where you can find suitable illustrations,
drawings to add to your book.
Here's an example from pixabay.com that I found, which has a CC0 Creative Commons license
which is free for commercial use.
And there is no attribution required. of course they will appreciate if you can provide a link back but then it is not required.
But there is a word of caution here
This might not always work as amazon says, as you can see here, 'freely available internet content' is also not allowed.
But yeah, you have this option with that risk though.
And a bonus tip here: learning to use at least one of these three software can help us in the long-run:
Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape - these are all graphics programs that can tremendously help
in creating our own drawings and artwork.
learning these might take time but it's worth the efforts.
If you cannot get Photoshop, GIMP is an alternative open source and free to download program;
similar to Inkscape.
Learning, even just one of these programs, is enough and others are quite similar.
In fact, just learn to use brushes, layers, and color picking tools and basically you can ignore all the
other features, which might seem intimidating for a beginner.
That alone can make you cross 50% of the ocean.
If you are hungry for more: here is a list of 35 free graphics programs that are free
alternatives to other paid softwares.
Now let's see the other option: Translate.
This is a simple and straightforward option.
If you are well-versed in writing and speaking in English and any one other language, which
could be your native mother tongue, a foreign language or any other regional language, then
you can translate a public domain book into that other language
which you are confident in using.
Then publish it through KDP.
This is a time consuming task but it's simple and straightforward.
In this webpage from Amazon help topic page,
there are some translation resources, which are
primarily for people who are authors
who are looking for translators to help
them out. But then you can still use some of the resources mentioned
here, like, from some of their questions that you might
ask yourself before you get into translation work.
For example, how long will the translation take
how much the translation might cost
You could do some research and then find out on your own as to how much of efforts this
might take for you to pickup before you
get into the translation task.
The next option is about Annotation.
Annotate
KDP Help topic says annotations are like
additional content like study guides, literary critiques, detailed biographies, or historical context.
To better understand this, let's see a successful example from Amazon itself
as you can see they can have an example on the Amazon topic itself
Pride and Prejudice Annotated, which I am going to search
and I already have it open over here.
And let's go into this particular option
As you can see, they have
clearly given what 'extra' features they added to this book to differentiate it.
{{Reading text on-screen}}
They have given a tremendous value to this book.
Pride and Prejudice, which is quite a famous book.
And this person has picked up this book and then added
a lot of details that could add value to the readers.
This can show us how annotations can be successfully
implemented.
So, this can be a classic example.
This author, this person, David Shapard has also given another
similar book from the same author, Jane Austen here,
"Sense and Sensibility"; let's see how the customer reviews have turned up.
This book also has 2000 annotations on facing pages including explanations of historical contexts.
citations, definitions, clarifications
literary comments, analysis, introduction, everything
more than 100 informative illustrations.
Although you may not give so much,
you could at least at a minimum should give
10 or more unique illustrations, that are relevant to the book.
Let's see the comments for this particular book, as to how it has been given. As you can see, there are so many good comments.
{{ reading on screen comments }}
So, these are some of the helpful comments because this author has really added
value to this book by providing his own additions on top of the original public domain book.
now let us get inside the book and see some examples.
So, here is the copyright page
and these are the Table of Contents.
See, these are the illustrations that got added to this book; let's see what they are.
There are so many illustrations that the person has added.
to the original book; these are all illustrations
like a drawing or writing table.
let's see the first pages.
this is a first page; let us try and find out if there is any image added; will come from the front cover
there you go, here's an image - did we find that on the illustrations, Table of contents
"A Woman with a book outdoors" - Front page; Yup, that's there.
Here it is.
"A Woman reading a book outdoors"
So this is an illustration added by our author
I think so because we can see there is a reference to this original source of this image
perhaps, this is a public domain image which this author has added as part of the illustration
as you can see, it's written as from the repository of arts, literature, fashions, manufacturers, whatever, and then there
is an year which gives as eighteen fifteen or thirteen; which means it's clearly in the public domain
So this young woman reading book, this illustration is added to this book; similarly there
are so many illustrations as you can see that got added to the book.
Apart from that, let's also check the 'surprise me' section, which may or may not give us more images, as an example.
OK, I am not going to waste any more time on this. You can check it for yourself
if you get an option to do so.
by verifying, see there are some more books over here,
"The Annotated Persuasion", "The Annotated Emma"
These are all quite famous books that got annotated
What's good is that, the comments section, as you can see,
this is the kind of experience
that we want our readers to get
when they see a public domain work that
you have added value using illustrations, or translations
with so much value-added
that can benefit your readers than just simply throwing in few random images and publishing it for money.
I hope this video helped in understanding better about editing public domain books
Please hit on the like button if it did. And subscribe if you haven't already done so.
Because I will soon be doing another detailed video on
how to find public domain books
how to validate and confirm the book is in public domain and
how to insert your annotations, illustrations into the public domain books
and much more
Thanks for watching
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