How To Get Free Books To Give Away
Many of you have taken advantage of the 3 free books I give away on this website. Since I’ve started doing it the number of subscribers has gone up consistently.
Today I’m going to teach you how to get your own free books that you can give away. This is a great technique to generate leads in any business, whether it is subscribers to a blog, or just to get email addresses of people who may be interested in your product.
Some people have asked, “How are you able to give them away?”
The answer is that these books are either in the “public domain”, which means the copyright has expired, or they are under the “creative commons” license, which means you have some freedom to use them.
One of the best places I’ve found to get these types of books is Scribd.com.
Supposedly they are one of the top 300 sites on the internet (that no one has heard of), receive 20 million visitors a month, and have 17 billion words in their “library” of uploaded documents.
I suggest you take some time to browse their site and see what pieces of content might be useful in your niche. They have other types of content besides books as well, such as sheet music, art, slides, and essays.
What material can I give away for free?
Copyrighted material is the strictest: you can’t use it without paying. Public domain works are the most open: you can do whatever you want. Creative commons is somewhere in the middle.
As you browse the different documents on Scribd you will see little icons that tell you what the copyright situation is. Here is what each one means (it can get a little tricky):
Public Domain
Public domain works are the most wide open. You can download them right off Scribd and distribute them on your own website. You can even edit them however you want and sell them.
According to Wikipedia:
In the United States, all books and other works published before 1923 have expired copyrights and are in the public domain. In addition, works published before 1964 that did not have their copyrights renewed 28 years after first publication year also are in the public domain…
The Creative Commons License
The next four are all more specific versions of the creative commons license. Under all of them you can still give the book away for free.
Attribution
This means you need to give credit to the original person who created the document. Most commonly, by leaving their name or website intact inside the work to show they were the original author.
You can still do whatever else you want with it though, including giving it away, selling it, or editing it.
Non-Commercial
This means you can still give it away for free, you just can’t sell it.
No Derivatives
This means you can only give away verbatim copies of the work. You can’t edit it.
Keep Same License
You can make derivative works (edited copies) but they must be distributed under the same creative commons license that the original used.
Conclusion
You can read more about the creative commons license here, but as you can see, under any of the creative common licenses you can still give the book away for free (which was my main goal). Just keep the author’s name in there and don’t edit it and you should be fine.
I don’t really recommend trying to sell public domain or creative common works (although some people do this). Instead, give them away for free to generate leads.
There really are some great books out there. I read and paid good money for both Think and Grow Rich and The Richest Man In Babylon when I bought them in paperback years before this website. It wasn’t until much later that I realized they were available to distribute for free.
So there you have it. Go to Scribd.com and check out some free material that your potential customers might really like. Then give it away to them in exchange for their email address to build leads for your business.
Most people don’t buy anything the first time they come to your site, and if they leave you will never hear from them again. But if you give them some instant value in exchange for their email, now you can follow up with them at some point down the road to build trust and a real business relationship.
Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong
Want to get 3 of the top 10 books ever written on building wealth for FREE? Think and Grow Rich, The Richest Man In Babylon, and The Way To Wealth are yours for free when you subscribe to get updates from StartBreakingFree.com!
Liz said,
Wrote on August 21, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
Hi Brian,
Thanks so much for the valuable information. I have signed up for the site. However, I cannot seem to locate the copyright and pd information.
Every book I look up have the person and money with a slash through it symbol. When I click on those, it does not provide additional information. I don’t know how to determine what I can give away and what I cannot. For example, this book:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3933994/Managment-The-Performance-Appraisal-Question-and-Answer-Book
is listed with those symbols. However, when you look at the book itself, it is copyrighted in 2002. Can you help clarify? Thanks for everything!
[Reply]
Brian Armstrong reply on August 23rd, 2008 3:28 pm:
Hi Liz, the person and money symbol is the most common I think. It means its under the creative commons license and you can give it away as long as you show attribution and don’t sell it.
The copyright in the body of the document is older, so it looks like it’s now under the creative commons. As long as Scribd shows it under the creative commons, I personally wouldn’t hesitate to give it away on my own site. I think it’s safe to assume the owner now wants it to be distributed freely.
Of course, I am no lawyer, but that is what I would do :)
Brian
[Reply]
3bagsfull said,
Wrote on August 25, 2008 @ 2:31 am
Just wanted to let you know that when I signed up to get the free books, I had an issue with the link.
The feedburner link worked fine. It was the link in the email I received that was the issue.
After I confirmed the feedburner subscription, I clicked on the tinyurl link to get the books. The link does not have the “www” part of the required link. When I clicked on it, it wouldn’t find the download. So, I put into the browser and retyped the www and it worked.
You might want to investigate.
I am enjoying your blog and I wish you great success.
[Reply]
Brian Armstrong reply on August 27th, 2008 2:34 pm:
Hi, I appreciate you letting me know. It’s strange because I just tried it and it seemed to work ok. It’s possible this was a temporary problem with the tinyurl site. I’m hoping thats what it is, thanks for stopping by and letting me know!
Brian
[Reply]