Once intellectual property enters the public domain, it is not longer protected by international copyright law and may be reused for free. When a book enters the public domain, it is normally due to the copyright term of the work expiring, the work being created as a product of government employment, or the creator of the work failing to complete the copyright requirements in his or her country. Authors of books classically have the rights to reproduce, create derivative works, and display the book or work that has been created. If the book or text has entered the public domain, others may use these rights freely without compensation.

Where Can You Find Public Domain Books?

Unfortunately, there is not a single location to find all of the books in the public domain. There are local resources to find public domain texts such as the library in your community or used bookstores that maintain listings of books that have entered the public domain. In order to better use these listings, however, you need to narrow the focus of the book search to a niche to minimize the amount of time you spend searching for public domain books. An easier method to use for finding texts that have passed into the public domain is to make use of some of the available online resources.How Do I Locate Public Domain Books?

Find Public Domain Books at Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is one of the oldest sites online specializing in providing free e books and text that have entered the public domain in the United States. On the Project Gutenberg website, you can search the database of texts by author, subject, or title. One of the nice features of the site, is that the texts can be viewed online or downloaded as a zipped text file, HTML, ePub, or Mobipocket format. Project Gutenberg supports electronic book reader formats for the iPad, Kindle, Android, and Sony Reader at the time of this writing. No charge is made for the public domain books located on the project's website, however, the project team does ask for a donation if you enjoy the service. Depending on the country that you reside, the works found on this site may or may not be in the public domain depending on the laws in your area.

Find Public Domain Books on the Internet Public Library

The Internet Public Library is another free resource to find public domain books online. The site is serviced by a large number of student and other volunteers and combines information from the IPL and the Internet Index (LII) websites and is hosted by Drexel University. All texts hosted on the site are available in text, HTML, or ZIP formats for download. The Internet Public Library has about 2/3's of the number of books found on Project Gutenberg, but is worth using when trying to find books that have entered the public domain.

If you intend on using public domain books to resell on your own, you do need to take the extra time to verify that the electronic work you download is not a modified version of the original work. Although, the original book may now be free, if someone else has created a derivative work, the updated text may no longer be free to reuse for profit.