The Stealth Content Secret

or…

How I Solved My Content Problems Forever Using The Magic of “The Golden Forty”…

by Debra Conrad

Do you own an Information Publishing business?

If you’re not sure how to answer this question, consider this…

Are you consistently in need of fresh content for any (or all) of the following?

  • Niche Blogs? (We all know the power of blogging!)
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  • Articles? (Yes, article marketing is still very much alive and well!)
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  • eBooks? (Instantly downloadable PDF ebooks offered through ClickBank or another payment processor perhaps like eJunkie?)
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  • Kindle eBooks? (or perhaps even eBooks for the Nook or Ipad?)
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  • Physical Books? (Using a Print-On-Demand service such as Amazon’s Createspace?)

Regardless of the media format you deliver your content in, if you answered “yes” to any of the above questions…then congratulations – you’re an Information Publisher!

Even if you haven’t been in the Information Publishing game for any great length of time, you probably realize that in order for your business to grow (and grow fast), you need lots of great content for your blogs, your articles, and other information products.

Information Publishing, Information Marketing, Internet Marketing – whatever you want to call it, one thing is certain…

Content is King!

If you don’t have lots of great content, you don’t have a business.

No Content=No Traffic, No Authority, No Rank, No Products=No M-O-N-E-Y

Success in Information Publishing starts and ends with one thing – the QUALITY of your content.

Creating good content can be a real chore though… 

In fact, it’s probably the most time-consuming and challenging part of any Internet based business.

Continuously creating your own original content is a ton of work!

There’s nothing wrong with creating your own unique, quality content of course…

But…if you spend 100% of your time creating content, then precious little time is left for marketing it, the other critically important component of a successful online business.

Coming up with fresh new content in a time crunch is tough.

If you have a blog that you post to daily, you know exactly what I mean. If you have multiple blogs, then you definitely know where I’m coming from!

You have to continuously feed the content needs of your business…or it’ll eat you!

So what’s the quickest way to get a hold of reams of fresh, new high-quality content without having to resort to writing everything yourself all the time?

Let’s have a look at some of the more commonly proposed solutions…

Option # 1 – Ghostwriters

You can hire ghost writers to create enough content filled blogs and products that would certainly provide you a decent income. In fact I have done this…but let me tell you – it ain’t cheap.

While ghost writers can create content at a very fast pace (with articles anyway)… it’s always a crap shoot whether it’s going to be something worth reading. Quite frankly, a good ghostwriter that can actually produce quality content doesn’t come cheap. The ghostwriters that are cheap aren’t going to produce the kind of content you would want to use in your products…or display publicly for that matter.

Plus, there’s the plagiarism factor. How do you know for sure that the content you’ve been supplied with hasn’t been ripped off from somebody else’s copyrighted work? The actuality is that you’ll never know for sure.

Bottom line on ghostwriters – the only ghostwriters actually worth hiring are very expensive. They have skills and they know it. Even if you’re ok with paying someone thousands of dollars to custom write an entire book for you…you’re still looking at a few months or more before you have a finished product. If anyone tells you they can write a quality book faster than that – run the other way!

Option # 2 – Private Label Rights Content

Many people suggest using PLR or “Private Label Rights”products as a way to get ready-made content fast. With PLR you are usually purchasing a license that gives you specific “rights” to republish a collection of prepackaged material. These rights typically let you put your name on the material as the author, edit the material in any manner you wish, and redistribute the material in a variety of ways.

PLR material comes in a variety of different formats from individual articles, to eBooks, to video and audio.

Sounds pretty good, right? Pre-packaged content that you can do pretty much anything you want with? Sign me up!

Here’s the inherent problems with PLR material…

  1. Often, the quality of the material is not that high. Many PLR products were written by cheap ghostwriters and thus the result is something less than appealing. Many PLR packages were put together by somebody looking to make a quick buck by selling PLR packages to other marketers. Rarely do they care whether the material is of a high-quality nature or not.
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  2. If you find a good PLR package, you can bet you’re not the only one. You can pretty much bet that a thousand other information marketers have the exact same PLR package which means that everybody is trying to sell the same material to the same niche markets – and that’s never good.
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  3. Outside of the Internet Marketing arena, there’s a real shortage of good PLR material available. Sure, there are a limited number of PLR packages aimed at niche marketing but they all suffer from the same two issues that we’ve already outlined above.
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  4. Then there’s the whole “duplicate content issue”. You know that you have to rewrite each and every PLR article in your own words to prevent duplicate content. If you haven’t noticed the Google cache, and the way Google hides articles that are exact duplicates…well then you haven’t been searching online lately. It’s a problem everyone has who doesn’t change their PLR articles.

Bottom line with PLR – it’s usually (not always… I know some fantastic PLR providers) recycled crap that’s not going to be of a high enough quality to risk the success of your business. There’s a lot of things that can cause you embarrassment in this life – the quality of your content shouldn’t be one of them!

So what’s an Information Publisher to do?

How can you simultaneously increase your output of high-quality content and subsequent income without having to resort to spending a fortune on ghostwriters or taking a gamble on PLR content and all of the issues that come with it…

…and yet still manage to have time for a life?

Relax.

Providing an intelligent and useful answer to this question is what this article is all about.

I found the answer to my content dilemmas and I never worry about content now.

And…if you are willing to keep an open mind to what I am going to share here…

You truly may never have to worry about content again either.

The content sourcing strategy that I will share with you here is certainly no secret…smart information publishers have been using this concept for years.

Many of them have even built entire hugely successful businesses around the concept.

The content sourcing strategy I will share here is completely legal, completely ethical, extremely affordable…and massively effective.

There’s a literal army of expert writers and editors in your niche just waiting to be put to work creating your content…

With amazing speed, indisputable quality, and best of all…

They practically work for peanuts!

I know…

That’s pretty hard to imagine!

But true none the less.

Are you ready to meet your new content creation team?

Read on to discover how I solved my content problems forever using the magic of a concept I call “The Golden Forty”…

How I Solved My Content Problems Forever Using The Magic of “The Golden Forty”…

What if I told you that immediately after reading this article, you will have access to an amazing, high-quality, virtually-endless, fountain of niche content that…

  • Has been written by experts in your niche…
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  • Has been through a rigorous editing process by professional editors to ensure high quality standards…
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  • Already legally belongs to you…and you may not even know it!

Sounds pretty crazy doesn’t it?

Oh yeah…and it gets even crazier….

Did you know that there are millions of books published in the United States that currently have absolutely NO copyright protection whatsoever?

In fact, over 85 million books published in the U.S. are floating around right now with no copyright protection according to U.S. Government employed copyright experts.

So what does this have to do with MY content needs…where’s my “army of writers”?

I’m getting to that – keep your PJ’s on!  :)

You see, when a book has no copyright protection it becomes the property of the public at large – that includes you, me…even your crazy neighbor down the street.

When a book has no copyright protection, anyone can legally take the content from that book and reuse it for any purpose under the sun – including taking that content and republishing it as is or by using it to create all new information based products.

The fact of the matter is that there is in existence a HUGE pool of copyright-free books that you can grab high-quality, niche specific content from and reuse in your Information Publishing business…

  • Without having to ask permission…
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  • Without having to pay a single cent in royalties…
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  • Without having to give credit to the original author (unless you just want to).
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  • Without having to share your income with anyone ~ you keep all of the profits!

In my own Information Publishing business, I’ve learned how to tap into this incredible fountain of evergreen, niche content and leverage it with outstanding results.

It really is amazing what’s available to you. There are tons of copyright-free content that’s been written on just about every evergreen niche topic imaginable.

Imagine having access to a mountain of copyright-free books that you can immediately republish and put to work in your business!

Books with titles like…

Great titles, right? Not hard to imagine how each of these books could be spun off into profitable new products!

This is just barely scratching around on the surface a little bit with regards to the massive amount of copyright-free titles that are available to you. I grabbed these titles randomly from my personal copyright-free book library that I’ve been quietly building over the last few years (and all of these titles are available for download right here on Best Public Domain Books).

The majority of these titles represent full 100 – 300 page books.

These books are like PLR on steroids!

Just like PLR, the content in these books can be reused without restriction of any kind.

But because each book has been written by an actual authority on the topics covered (and professionally proofread and edited), the quality of the material is much, much higher than that of even the most expensive ghostwriter.

And because these books are no longer protected by copyright, the content from these books can be reused by us legally to create new products with a quickness!

“But How Could This Be True? How Could Books Published As Recently As 1963 Be Without Copyright Protection?”

Hang with me for a minute and all will be revealed!

Our story begins with a set of laws passed by the United States Congress over 100 years ago – in 1909 to be exact.

This set of laws is known collectively as “The Copyright Act of 1909” and in a nutshell, these laws were created to spell out exactly how copyright works in the United States…and more importantly, these laws dictate exactly how long copyright protection lasts.

Most people believe that the copyright protection on a book (or any other intellectual property) lasts forever…

This is NOT true.

Copyright protection on a book lasts only a set amount of time.

After this set amount of time passes, copyright protection expires and the book becomes copyright-free…by law.

What you need to know about the Copyright Act of 1909 and how it opens up a whole world full of opportunities for you is this (pay attention – this is HUGE!)…

Under the Act, when a book was published in the United States, as long as the book contained a proper copyright notice, it received automatic copyright protection for a term of 28 years from the date of publication.

Did you read that? Just 28 years!

The Act also states that in the 28th year after publication, the copyright holder (could have been either the author or the publisher) had the option to “renew” the copyright protection.

If the copyright holder did renew the copyright protection, then the book would remain under copyright protection for another 28 years. Laws were put in place later (see the Copyright Act of 1976) that extended this renewal term out to 47 years and then another 20 years for a total renewal term of 67 years (see the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998).

However, these two additional Copyright Acts were NOT retroactive. In other words, they only applied to works that were still copyright protected at the time that the laws were passed. If a book was already in the public domain (because the copyright term had expired due to lack of renewal under the terms of the 1909 Act), then the book would remain in the public domain…no ifs, ands, or buts.

So let’s say we had a book published in the U.S. in 1963…the book received an initial copyright protection term of 28 years…it was protected until 1991 to be exact. If the book was not renewed for copyright protection in 1991, then it immediately fell into the public domain under the terms of the Copyright Act in enforcement at that time.

Books published in 1963 were the last books that this could be possible with. Books published in 1964 and later are off limits because in 1992 (28 years later, when the book would come up for renewal), a whole different set of rules applied – copyright renewal was no longer optional, it was automatic).

So, to summarize…

Any book published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1963 is public domain in the U.S. now as long as no copyright renewal occured 28 years after publication.

With me so far? Good.

Now, here’s the kicker…

According to experts within the U.S. Copyright Office, the vast majority of books published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 were NEVER renewed for copyright protection in their 28th year after publication!

It’s this 40 year span between 1923 and 1963 that I refer to as “The Golden Forty”.

So, just how many books were published in the U.S.between 1923 and 1963?

No one can honestly answer this question but one thing is agreed upon – the number is in the MILLIONS.

Of course the really important question for us is…

“How many of these books are no longer protected by copyright?”

In a cross-sectional study of registrations and copyright renewals of books published in the United States performed by the U.S. Copyright Office (Barbara Ringer, “Study No. 31: Renewal of Copyright” - 1960), it was estimated that only 7% of books published in this 40 year time frame were actually renewed for copyright protection.

7%!

Can you imagine?

This means that roughly 93% of all books published between 1923 and 1963 are now completely without copyright protection.

That’s a ton of copyright-free content…

How much content exactly?

It’s been conservatively estimated that there are over 85 MILLION books floating around now without any copyright protection whatsoever.

Are all books published in this time-frame commercially viable and suitable for the creation of information products and web content?

Of course not… but with millions of books on every imaginable topic under the sun, you can sure bet that you’ll find lots of content suitable for use in your niche…assuming your niche is evergreen.

“Ok, well what about stuff that was published before 1923?”

Most people that have heard of “the public domain” understand that any work published in the U.S. before 1923 is automatically in the public domain.

This is true.

Here’s proof, with a reference link so you can look it up yourself…

“Works published before January 1, 1923, have fallen into the public domain, but works published after that date could still be protected by copyright if the copyright was renewed by registration or automatically by law under Public Law 102-307.”

United States Copyright Office Circular 15t – Extension of Copyright Terms
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15t.pdf

 

Have no doubt ~ you can find all of the content you need to build a very successful business using only pre-1923 content.  However, it’s my honest opinion that if you only stick with pre-1923 content, you’re actually limiting yourself in a major big way.

There are some drawbacks to using pre-1923 content especially if you have no interest in republishing “antique” books and are more interested in establishing yourself as a provider of modern content (in other words, you would rather hide the fact that your content comes from the Public Domain)…

  1. When it comes to pre-1923 content everybody and their brother is trying to use the same content as it’s mostly pre-1923 content that can be downloaded from all of the popular online Public Domain  repositories (from a competitive stand-point, you’re better off staying away from this material unless you’re prepared to do some major rewriting)…
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  2. Many times the language and writing style used in these books is archaic, very formal, and outdated language so considerable time needs to be spent rewriting the content for today’s use.

Don’t get me wrong ~ I love pre-1923 Public Domain books and there are many wonderful opportunities for creating successful and interesting products from this content but…

If you have a blog or info-product publishing business and you need more modern material (in other words the emphasis in your business is not on “republishing old material”), then you want the material to be as modern, fresh, and relevant as possible.    In this case, you need to be looking at books published in the U.S. from 1923-1963 because you’ll be AMAZED at the stuff that you can find from this time period!

If you want fresher content for your blogs, your ebooks, and other products, then I highly encourage you to spend time developing the skill-sets needed to leverage content from this 40 year period in your publishing business and you will not be disappointed.

Why do I feel so strongly about this?

Because…

  1. If you don’t consider this time period, you’re leaving millions of great Public Domain books on the table (there’s some really phenomenal stuff out there)…
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  2. Many publishers of Public Domain content practically ignore 1923-1963 books even though this area is such a giant, spectacular bonanza of wonderful content ~ that’s great news for us because it means that the content is not already being used by thousands of other publishers in most cases…
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  3. Most of the content from this forty year span is much fresher, much more relevant, and much closer to being written to today’s standards so there’s a lot less (if any) rewriting needed…
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  4. Where evergreen topics are concerned, the material is still very much relevant because in most cases the fundamental info hasn’t really changed all that much over the last 50 years or so.

This stuff is true stealth content.

For years people have been asking me how Public Domain content could possibly be relevant when creating content for today’s markets…

This question always surprised me until I realized that the people asking this question really have no clue that the vast majority of books published in the U.S. from 1923-1963 are now in the Public Domain. When they think of the Public Domain, they picture a bunch of ancient, dusty books full of irrelevant knowledge.

In my opinion, this forty year period we are discussing is the true gold mine of the Public Domain! It’s what drew me to the Public Domain in the first place, and it’s this content that I use the most every day in my own businesses. This is the stuff that makes great content for our niche blogs, newsletters, ebooks, and much more – it’s literally instant content.

There are exceptions of course…but for the most part, content pulled from public domain books published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1963 is still just as fresh and relevant as the content you’ll find in books on the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble today.

Have a browse around this site and it’s inventory of books.  Then download your FREE full-length copy of the 1962 self-help classic, “Grow Rich While You Sleep” (details can be found on the right hand side of this page), and you’ll see what I mean. The quality of the content from these books can not be denied. After all, these books are written by professional expert writers, edited by professional editors, and then published and made available to the public at least once already in their lifetimes. Many were even considered “best sellers” in their day.

Here at Best Public Domain Books, I’ve made it my mission to bring you editable copies of as many commercially viable books from the “Golden Forty” as I possibly can…to make it extremely easy for you to start leveraging this wonderful content in your publishing business today.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the site, and I look forward to hearing from you as you begin to truly realize what this content can do for your business in terms of enabling you to create high-quality, life-enriching, profitable information products faster then ever before!

Oh! Before I forget…I just introduced something new I’m extremely excited about…I now offer “Niche Rocker Packs”. These are packs of books related by topic at discount prices…now you can grab a whole bunch of content to “Rock Your Niche” at one low price!

Click here to check out my new “Niche Rocker Packs” and position your yourself as an immediate expert in your niche with quality content.

Sincerely,


“Best Public Domain Books”
Thought Rocket Publishing / Chameleon Computer Services