I received this comment on my article Public Domain Narration Headquarters. Since the question involves a book still under copyright, I decided to create a new article, redacting some of the identifiable aspects of the message.

I would love to record a memoir by a great [person]. Once recorded, I think there would be a market for it. The book was published in 2002, therefore is not public domain. It’s sold by Amazon but there is no audiobook of it.

I know I’ll have to contact the publisher but I don’t know where to go from there. I don’t know how to set up a contract for the job (I’d be willing to do royalty share). I don’t know how to get the audiobook onto Amazon and Audible so people can buy it.

I’ve recorded more than X books, mostly for Learning Ally. I have a good home studio. I got two jobs from [a Big 5 publisher] but have not been having much luck with auditions of late. My work of late has focused on [certain]-themed books. I haven’t figured out Findaway or Spoken Realms. I’m getting my business education from you and APA but there’s a lot I need to learn. Any advice you can give will be appreciated.

Thanks for the note.

First, this article may seem more of a general answer than you’d hoped. It needs to benefit the most people. Obviously, each discussion and negotiation about audio rights and audiobook production will be unique. I can’t anticipate or explain every possible scenario, and the scope of the topic is beyond what I can cover in an article. I can only give you a basic game plan and some resources.

Second, I need to state a few general facts about copyright so we’re all on the same page:

1. The audio rights holder (RH) could be the author, literary agent, or publisher.
2. Every book published in the US after 1963 remains copyrighted. Only the audio rights holder has the legal right to make an audiobook of these titles.
3. Titles published in the US before or during 1930 are in the public domain. Anyone can make an audiobook of these books without obtaining any permission or paying any licensing fees or royalties. A new year of books enters the public domain every 1 January, meaning that books published in 1931 will be public domain on 1/1/27.
4. Books published in the US between 1931 and 1963 may be public domain or could still retain copyright.

You must research the publication and copyright renewal dates to determine a book’s copyright status, and, if it is still copyrighted, the rights holder. If it’s public domain, head over to my Public Domain Narration Headquarters for more info and resources.

This article concerns only those books still in copyright. 

Decide Desired Outcome

Before I continue, let me state that anyone who plans to approach a rights holder about narrating their book needs to already be experienced in recording audio files and having them proofed and mastered.

Your chances of success are further helped if you have completed projects for RHs through a distributor platform (ACX, Findaway, Spoken Realms, Author’s Republic, etc.) or directly with publishers or production companies. You also will want to be knowledgeable about audiobook distribution and have a distribution plan ready for books you wish to license.

You can narrate a copyrighted book in 1 of these 2 ways:

1. License the audio rights
   • usually requires an advance payment against projected royalties — the amount is a negotiation point
   • licensee is responsible for cover art, distribution choices, and marketing
2. Persuade the rights holder to retain their audio rights and hire you to narrate/produce the audiobook
   • This option intuitively seems easier to pursue with authors if you are willing to be paid by royalty share or possibly a royalty share hybrid where you receive an amount less than your PFH rate up front to cover your production costs.

It’s important to know how you plan and expect to create the audiobook BEFORE you contact someone about audiobook production for several reasons:

• A publisher may not license titles to an individual. You might need to partner with a production company.
• If you want to license the title, the rights holder needs to know you have experience producing audiobooks and have created a distribution plan.
• An author may not be interested in managing the process and only wants to license the rights.
• Authors who want to produce the audiobook may need guidance from you about the whole process, particularly distribution options.

I’m not trying to sell you anything, but I hosted a webinar about licensing audio rights with Jessica Kaye. Jessica is an IP attorney and Grammy-winning audiobook director and distributor. If you’re interested, the replay with transcript and sample contract are available on my Shop page.

This article contains some pros and cons of the approaches, as well as some considerations for a licensing offer.

Also, this is a good place to point out that members of my NarratorsRoadmap.com site have access to my exclusive Audiobook Distributors Comparison Chart in which I list over 30 attributes for 9 distributors and share my distributor recommendations.

Discover Rights Holder

In either case, you’d start by determining who owns the audio rights so you can send them a query.

I like to begin my quest with the author or literary agent as I usually receive a faster response.

In this case, the author has passed away. I therefore suggest starting the query with the publisher rather than researching the author’s estate.

I look up the book on Amazon and find the publisher’s name listed in the Product Details section of the page. You might also find it by using the Look Inside feature if that’s available for the book. Be sure to look at the hardback and paperback versions; the Kindle edition may have been published by an entity that isn’t the original book publisher.

If the book isn’t listed on Amazon, you can Google the title

I then Google the publisher’s name to see if they have a web site.

You usually want to connect with someone in the Subsidiary Rights department. You can look through the publisher’s site to find that department.

I don’t like writing messages to general email addresses like info@publishername.com. I use a Google site search on LinkedIn to see if I can find an employee in Subsidiary Rights.

site:LinkedIn.com PublisherName.com subsidiary rights 

If a name pops up, I’ll review their LinkedIn profile to ensure that they currently work with the publisher in the sub-rights department. Many times, a past job matches my search, and I don’t want to waste time writing to the wrong person.

With the particular book mentioned in the message, I couldn’t find anyone on LinkedIn for the publisher’s sub-rights. However, this publisher has an easily-discoverable site with a menu option for Staff. None of the descriptions included the word “rights”, so I’d write to either the Production Manager or the Executive Editor.

Find Contact Info

Once you have a name, you’ll need their email address.

Here are 4 tactics that may help you to discover the email address for a person:

1. Google one or more of these search terms:
   • [name] + email address
   • [name] + contact
   • site:[DomainName.com] + [name] + contact, where DomainName.com is the website URL
2. Enter the website domain name at Hunter.io. It will return a list of verified email addresses at that domain. You can search the results for the person you want to contact. If that person’s name isn’t listed in the results, you can use the “best guess” for the format of the email address.
3. Look on social media for their account and simply ask them for their email address.
4. Facebook users also may list their email address in the About section of their profile.

Send Initial Query

If you’re writing to the author, I suggest you do some additional research before contacting them:

• Read the book, or at least read the Kindle sample.
• Do your homework and look at the author’s site and social media. Follow authors on social media and comment between releases. If they talk about a new project, you might contact them about it.
• Your research will uncover specifics that will appeal to the author and help you make this initial query more personal and effective.

In addition, if the author already has some books in audio:

• You wouldn’t need to include comments in your query about the booming audiobook business. They already know!
• Check the narrators of the audiobooks. If the author only uses 1 narrator, don’t be a poacher! Find another book and author to contact.

NarratorsRoadmap.com members have additional resources available regarding author prospecting in the Create Your Own Path video course.

You might want to review my points of email marketing advice before firing off a message.

Your query should be brief — 50-125 words seems to be the sweet spot. You might compose the message on your phone to ensure it stays on a single screen. You can use the following elements:

1. Confirm that the person you’ve contacted does indeed control the audio rights for the book.
2. Ask whether they already have plans to create an audiobook.
3. Explain your interest in/connection to the book.
4. Succinctly mention the tremendous and continuous growth in the audiobook market.
5. State your background to give the RH confidence in your ability to produce the audiobook.
6. Request a reply.

Don’t Send a Sample

Many people send a sample from the book with the initial query to authors, and it’s a winning tactic for some.

For me, sending the book sample with the query is putting the cart before the horse. I’d wait to see if the person expresses interest before I spend time creating a sample.

You’re trying to start a relationship. A sample can feel pushy to the author — like you meet someone on a date and tell them you know all about them, want to build a house with them, and have already picked out the wallpaper!

When you include a sample, send it as a link rather than an attachment to the message.

Respond As Appropriate

If you don’t get a response within 2-3 weeks, I’d send another message. Be prepared to follow-up many times before you have a decision, especially if you’re communicating with someone at a large corporation.

You may need to negotiate the licensing terms.

If you want the RH to hire you, you may need to answer their (possibly many) questions about audiobook production, including things like how they can post the book on ACX and choose you as the narrator.

Produce and Distribute the Audiobook

Once you get a YES, you would sign appropriate contracts.

If you need a contract template in a work-for-hire situation, you can download one from ACX on this page. You can modify the Narration Services contract template to suit your circumstances, starting with removing “ACX” from its pages. Licensing the audio rights requires a different contract for which I suggest you consult with an attorney.

With a contract in place, you would record and produce the audiobook as you’ve done for other clients.

The steps to make the audiobook appear on Audible and other sites depends on which distributor(s) are chosen. If the author hired you, they select the distributor(s). If you’re the audio licensee, you would follow the distribution plan you devised earlier.

Basically, each distributor has its own method of intake for audio files and cover art. With many sites, you simply create an account, supply tax info, login, and upload the files. Note that on ACX and Findaway Voices, you as an audio licensee would use a different email address than your narrator address to create a rights holder account. (Your 2 accounts can use the same tax ID.) Other distributors may require a different means to establish an account and transfer files.

Those who license the rights are responsible for marketing the audiobook. My Audiobook Marketing Cheat Sheet has a wide range of ideas and tactics to help you promote your audiobook.

I hope this overview helps. If you have questions about this article or next steps, please leave a comment below. Good luck in obtaining this book, and please keep me posted so I can cheer you on!

Photo: Storyblocks.com

The post How to Narrate Copyrighted Books appeared first on Karen Commins.

When the obstacle in your way seems to have stopped you in your tracks,
it’s not a failure.
It’s part of what’s calling forth the necessary change
so you can move through, around, over, or under whatever is on your path to success.

— Christian Sørensen

This quote applies to my relationship to public domain books.

Although I started narrating audiobooks in 2002, it wasn’t until ACX launched in 2011 that I really got a foothold in the industry. Prior to that point, the market didn’t exist for a narrator who lived in Atlanta. You either had to be in New York or LA; otherwise, producers didn’t want to talk to you. With ACX, all of the rest of us could have a voice in audiobooks, too.

I soon burned out doing ACX projects since most of them were royalty share books where the rights holder was not promoting the audiobook. (Shameless plug: If you’re interested, I explain how to pick good ACX titles in my webinar Put Yourself in the ACX Drivers Seat, available on my Shop page.)

At the same time, I wasn’t getting traction with publishers. I decided to start recording more public domain books.

Public domain (PD) books are those where the copyright has expired. They belong to all of us, and anybody can do anything they want to with a book that’s in the public domain.

Over time, I’ve kind of become what I think of as the Public Domain Whisperer. I regularly search HathiTrust.org for interesting PD books. HathiTrust is a consortium of academic and research libraries with over 17 million digitized items, I often find a book that I think would be a good one for another narrator to do, so I send the link and the suggestion to them.

I’ve been gratified by the enthusiastic and excited responses to my finds. One experienced and award-winning narrator told me I had set them on a new path, and they’ve won a number of awards for their PD productions!

This article will be my Public Domain Narration Headquarters. I’ll start with ten reasons why I love, love, LOVE recording and publishing public domain books. Plus, check out the resources list below as well as the comments, where I answer your questions!

10. You’ll find an abundance of books that are ready for you to do.

Every year, new books come into the public domain!

On 1 January 2026, everything published in the United States in 1930 became public domain because the copyrights expired. What does that include? This page will give you a few ideas. Every book published in the US before 1930 is also in the public domain.

Books published in the US from 1931 to 1963 inclusive could be in the public domain, and the majority of them are. The copyrights had to be renewed during those years, and most people didn’t renew them. You must research a book’s copyright status to determine if the copyright was renewed. You’ll find info about research in the Resources section below.

If a book was published in 1931, you can start recording it today and be ready to publish it on New Year’s Day next year. You may find the early bird gets the worm!

9. You have complete creative control and freedom.

You can change words, including the way I did in a memoir. You can add or remove words. You can combine texts. In short, you can do anything you want to with a public domain book and are only limited by your creativity and imagination. I know people who have combined fairy tales or short stories (by theme or author) together to create a new compilation.

In a similar vein, one of my favorite projects of all time was one where I actually mashed up two public domain texts. Let me tell you the story to give you an idea of something you can do.

In 1889, Elizabeth Cochrane was a journalist for the NY World paper owned by Joseph Pulitzer. Her byline was Nellie Bly. As a publicity stunt for the paper, Nellie Bly challenged the feat set by fictional character Phileas Fogg to go around the world in 80 days. She was in New York and traveled east to London. She boarded a ship in mid-November, when the northern hemisphere was growing colder and losing daylight each day.

Meanwhile, Cosmopolitan, a rival magazine, didn’t want Nellie to get all the attention. So Cosmopolitan sent their reporter Elizabeth Bisland on a train that same day going west to San Francisco.

Nellie was trying to beat Phileas Fogg’s time, and Elizabeth wanted to beat Nellie! Nellie didn’t even know about Elizabeth’s trip.

They each wrote stories for their publication during their trips and later compiled their adventures in a book. Nellie’s book was published in 1890, and Elizabeth’s book appeared in 1891.

I mashed up their texts and put both women on the same timeline, which was so thrilling and exciting that I could barely stop to eat or sleep! I hired Melissa Reizian Frank to do a dual narration with me. In 2015, I published Bly vs Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg in a Race Around the World in conjunction with the 125th anniversary of the end of the race. I love that whole project and still get chills thinking about it!

8. Public domain books don’t have any kind of external production deadlines.

If an idea sparks for you but you can’t work on it now, it will still be available when you have time for it. Be aware, though, why ideas love speed. Also, as another side note to that article, the Bly vs Bisland mash-up was an idea that woke me up!

Last year, another mash-up idea came to me. I’m slowly developing it in between narrating for publishers and continuing my self-publishing with ready-made PD books, as well as my continuous work on NarratorsRoadmap.com. A good PD book perfectly fills holes in my schedule!

7. Public domain books are usually extremely well edited, and they have very few typos.

I particularly appreciated this aspect after narrating some contemporary manuscripts that weren’t quite up to that standard.

6. With PD books, I can record in genres that I love or in those where I’d like to work, all in a low-pressure setting.

Nobody’s waiting on this recording or looking to see what I’m doing. I can try something new, which in turn gives me something else to share with people on social media and in my marketing.

I devour biographies for pleasure reading, so you can imagine my excitement to find Diane Disney Miller’s The Story of Walt Disney from 1957. The copyright was not renewed, and she later said she didn’t really write it. It’s Walt’s story as written by Pete Martin. It’s as close to Walt’s memoir as there ever was. I recorded it and was thrilled to publish it on the 110th anniversary of Walt Disney’s birthday.

5. When I’m self publishing, I’m always working and improving my narration skills.

Language styles change over time. I seem to pick PD books with very complex sentence structures. With every book I do, I look for ways to present the material naturally in a way that aids listener understanding.

As part of APAC this year, I was able to have a short meeting with a producer. Their first question was, “Tell me what you’ve been doing lately.” I replied that I had recently completed a true crime book and a couple of biographies. I didn’t distinguish that the true crime book was for a publisher and the 2 biographies were self-published public domain books. It all counts!

4. You can still record a PD book even if there are other audio editions of the book available.

The beauty of public domain texts is that they belong to all of us! If it’s a popular book like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, you may discover other audio editions available, sometimes MANY other productions. Nothing can stop you from recording another one! Your interpretation is going to be different than anyone else, and you’re making art that you’re proud of.

Current events can generate interest in an audiobook, for instance the news story behind this vague tweet where I went looking for a PD book. In 1915, explorer Ernest Shackleton sailed his ship Endurance to Antarctica. It got stuck in the ice and sunk. Over a century later, the ship was discovered. The History Channel showed a fascinating documentary about it in March.

My search for related books revealed Shackleton wrote about it in South. Several audio versions of it had been done, but I would happily record that book if I were a British man. He wrote another book about a different exploration that’s not on Audible. I also found a fabulous biography about him that’s not in audio.

An upcoming movie tie-in could be a great reason to publish a new edition of a book! The movie company’s marketing machine could put the wind in your sails and help your audiobook gain visibility.

3. I can submit my work for review.

AudioFile Magazine reviewed one of my public domain books and has reviewed many from other narrators.

2. I can submit my work for awards.

I entered So Big by Edna Ferber in the Independent Audiobook Awards and was thrilled when it became a finalist in the Classics category. I know narrators who have been awarded Earphones, SOVAS, and Audies Awards for their public domain audiobooks.

1. I keep all of the royalties.

I have to tell you, asynchronous (passive) income from public domain audiobooks every month is the gift that keeps on giving!

Like a royalty share book, you’re not guaranteed a book will sell, much less be a hit. It may take a while for it to earn out. It may never earn out. It’s always a risk.

But one PD book that does really well can make up for all the ones that aren’t selling as well! The more public domain books I record and publish, the more I want to do, and the more excited I am about my work.

Other resources on this topic:

As I continue to create content related to public domain books, I’ll update the list below.

Starting Point

I wrote the article Planning Your Trip to Public Domain World to give you a comprehensive guide through the 9 steps to follow to produce and publish your Public Domain audiobook.

Additional Info

• I include the most detail about public domain books in my Create Your Own Path video course and my webinar Public Domain Audiobooks and Self-Publishing, which are available to all paid members of NarratorsRoadmap.com.
  • In addition to talking about finding sources of books or even inspiration for your search, I also:
    • discuss how to research copyrights to determine whether the book is in the public domain
    • detail how and why I edit and update a public domain text
    • explain publishing considerations and distributor options
    • demonstrate the rights holder process of claiming a book on ACX
    • include 2 long lists of relevant resources not found here. Beyond linking to other sites with PD books, I’ve hand-curated and shared over 30 specialized collections of books on HathiTrust.org that narrators might choose to perform in the categories of:
      • Authors (16)
      • Subjects (11)
      • Years (6: 1925-1930)
      • More collections coming soon!
  • Members also can access my Audiobook Distributors Comparison Chart. I compare 9 distributors across 30+ points so you can decide the best distributor(s) for your audiobook.
    • Note that if you already have a narrator account on a marketplace site like ACX, you’ll need to create a rights holder account using a different email address. Both your narrator and rights holder accounts can share the same tax ID.
  • As a special enticement to join, you’ll find a discount on my Shop page in the “Rent My Brain” section.
• I participated in this June 2022 Clubhouse chat about PD books.
• I’ve long advocated creating your own work. In addition to my 10 points above in this article, you might read my articles Reasons to Create Your Own Stuff part 1 and part 2. The profound Eckhart Tolle quote that I highlighted in part 2 has proven true for me.
• Since public domain books have much in common with royalty share books, the 5 reasons I listed in this article to do royalty share books apply to public domain books. When I wrote I’d do a royalty share over a public domain title, I wasn’t commercially publishing PD books. Now, I’d publish a PD book before I’d narrate and produce an RS book!
• If you’re looking for shorter pieces to record, check out Finding Newspapers and Short Stories in the Public Domain.
• I wrote this article to help narrators understand some copyright basics.
• These 2 articles are overflowing with links you’ll use to research rights holders and copyright status:
  • Links to Help Narrators Research Rights Holders to Books
  • When the Author is 6 Feet Under

Amazon Edition

• If you distribute your audiobook through ACX or InAudio (formerly Findaway), which uses ACX to distribute to Audible, you must start the production process with an Amazon edition. Keep in mind that ACX is owned by Audible, which is owned by Amazon; as a  result, everything in ACX is part of the Amazon ecosystem. For this reason, you always have to claim an edition on Amazon in order to start the audiobook process on ACX. You can choose hardback, paperback, or Kindle. It doesn’t matter which edition you claim.
• This requirement for an Amazon edition is ONLY true when you distribute to Audible via ACX or InAudio, which goes through ACX to distribute to Audible.
• Other distributors like Big Happy Family Audio, Blackstone, and Spoken Realms do not have this stipulation. My Audiobook Distributors Comparison Chart for members of NarratorsRoadmap.com has much more info about distributors’ requirements and offerings.
• This article describes what I did to publish a Kindle edition. Be sure to read all of the extensive comments to get the workaround to publishing your own Kindle edition, along with more tips and info!

Cover Art, Supplemental PDF of Images, and More

• I detailed my experiences in finding and selecting art for the Kindle version of Fanny Herself: A Passionate Instinct in this article. At the time, I had change the title to differentiate it per Kindle Publishing rules. If I were publishing it today, I’d leave the original title as is so that it would get displayed with the other editions on Amazon.
• This article examines whether you can legally re-use the images in a public domain book for your cover art or supplemental PDF.
• When using art depicting a real person, you not only have to research the copyright for the image but also whether you would violate their Right of Publicity as detailed in this article.
• You can use public domain art for your cover. My article Tour of Sites with Public Domain Art links to a bunch of repositories with comments about the images available in each.
• This site shows the most popular font by year. I love using a font that is authentic to the period of the book!
• I share a few ideas to help you promote your public domain audiobooks with interesting pull quotes from critics’ reviews, publisher marketing text in your descriptive blurbs, and authentic cover art in this article.

Marketing

• Since you’d be publishing your audiobook, you’d also be in charge of marketing and promoting it. You’ll find an abundance of ideas and tactics on my Audiobook Marketing Cheat Sheet.
• In this article, you’ll see how I promoted a public domain book based on something in it.
• You might find inspiring ideas in my articles Creating promo videos with public domain components part 1 and part 2.

Q&A

The comments section below is my Q&A about PD books. Got a question about public domain books? Leave me a comment!

Copyright:

• Can a 2nd publisher legally republish an audiobook I recorded for a different publisher?
• Can I change the title or text in a public domain book?
• Can I repackage a published anthology of short stories into a new book and record it?
• Could I run into issues if I use an edition that includes editing I’m not aware of?
  • Also includes comments about copyrights in other countries.
• Does your Audible listing state that it is a public domain book?
• How do you determine if a mid 1900’s book is in the PD?
• How is the copyright for new material different than the copyright on the book?
• If a book published in the US in 1930 is listed on Amazon, does that mean it isn’t Public Domain?
• If I don’t find a renewal for a book published in 1889, am I safe to record the book?
• When I see multiple versions of the same book, how do I know which one(s) are public domain?

Disclaimers:

• Do I need to include an explanatory note if I remove references to casual racism and problematic sections in the book?
• Would you ever write and record an introduction to a public domain book, for example as a way to address problematic language that you want/need to keep in? Or would you just put the disclaimer in the written description?

Distribution:

• On ACX, do you create a Rights Holder’s Profile as well as a Narrator Profile? And do you have to make a Direct Offer to yourself?
• Once you produce a PD book, how then do you distribute it?

Financial:

• ACX is withholding my payments. Do I need to copyright my audiobook with the US Copyright Office?
• If you work with a person who has already released the e-book on Amazon, how do you handle the royalty share percentage on Audible?
• Is it possible to make extra money from my narrations of public domain books?
• Would you create an LLC for your publishing empire?

General:

• Can you take a public domain book and make it more of a modern story?
• Should a newcomer do a public domain book as their first book?

Kindle Books / eBooks:

• Can I claim the free Kindle edition of a public domain book when I distribute through ACX?
• Do you make an e-book of a public domain book you’re making an audiobook of?
• How do I find contact info for the RH of the Amazon book?
• If a Kindle book includes a study guide, could I just narrate the PD portion of the book?
• If it says it’s “Annotated”, does that mean it’s no longer in the public domain?
• May I republish a Kindle edition from a PDF of a Public Domain text that was digitized by Google?
• What do I need to do to my Public Domain text so that I can publish a Kindle edition on Amazon (KDP) that I could then claim on ACX?

SAG/AFTRA:

• Do you have info about producing a PD project under a SAG/AFTRA contract?
  • This respondent offered his approach.
  • Since I’m non-union, SAG/AFTRA would only tell me that union members cannot self-contribute and that union members should ask their reps for any details.

Song Lyrics:

• If song lyrics are included in a public domain book, does that mean the song is also in the public domain?

Text Sources:

• Can I legally Project Gutenberg ebooks and sell the audiobook on commercial sites?
• How to search on HathiTrust
• How to download on HathiTrust  
  • If you’re a member of NarratorsRoadmap.com, I will download your book for you!

The post Public Domain Narration Headquarters appeared first on Karen Commins.

I narrated, produced, and published the public domain book The Story of Walt Disney by Diane Disney Miller and Pete Martin. I was thrilled that it released on 5 December in celebration of the 120th anniversary of Disney’s birth.

While I’m excited to announce this audiobook, I’m writing this post to talk about its cover art, and more specifically, information about image usage that may help you if you publish your audiobooks.

I’ve previously written about Copyrighted Images in a Public Domain Book.

That article discussed the images inside the book. Of course, the copyright laws also apply to the cover art, so I encourage you to read it.

Today, I want to talk about the laws concerning right of publicity. (Insert my usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer though I have voiced many in audiobooks.)

Original Artwork

Since I published the Disney audiobook, it was up to me to acquire appropriate cover art for it.

If you license the audio rights to a book still protected by copyright, you may be able to negotiate the usage of the cover art as part of the deal, depending on who owns the image. Even though a book may have entered the public domain, you can’t assume that you can use the original cover on your audiobook.

When the hardback book was published in 1957, it had this illustration on the book jacket. The design was carried over to the later paperback edition.

I learned in my research that Al Dempster was a Disney artist who worked on backgrounds in numerous movies and the illustrations for Golden Books. Walt thought Al was a wonderful artist and even owned and displayed some of Al’s paintings in his home.

I felt sure that Walt owned the copyright to this image in part because I saw a Disney work-for-hire contract.

It really wouldn’t matter, though, because all of those drawings of his copyrighted characters could land me in trouble with his company, which I believe is one of the most litigious companies on the planet.

Search For New Image

Although I couldn’t use the original art, I wanted to keep the illustrated look of the cover. I found great drawings of Walt in these First Day Covers (FDCs) sold on eBay.

I spent time researching the companies that produced these FDCs but kept running into dead ends. Many companies have merged or dissolved. I tracked one to the last owner but never got a response to my voice message or email.

“Fine”, I thought. “I’ll just find a great public domain photograph of Walt Disney and use it on my audiobook cover.”

Using my article Tour of Sites With Public Domain Art as my guide, I looked on various sites. I loved this picture of Walt in 1946 that I discovered on Wikimedia Commons.

The page notes that this image was a publicity shot from the Boy Scouts of America and not copyrighted.

Before I made a final decision, I wanted to check the motherlode of Disney pictures at Getty Images.

Several pictures including this one immediately stood out, and for more reasons than the aesthetic appeal.

You see that commercial use is restricted. In addition, it states “Not released.” These 2 words caused me to do more research and are the foundation for this post.

The Getty site explains that you need a release to:

ensure that the people and owners of property in the image or video gave permission for the image or video to be used for commercial purposes.

Right of Publicity

The right of publicity is the underlying reason why a release is needed. The Cornell Law site defines the right of publicity this way:

The right of publicity prevents the unauthorized commercial use of an individual’s name, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of one’s persona. It gives an individual the exclusive right to license the use of their identity for commercial promotion.

In the United States, the right of publicity is largely protected by state common or statutory law. Only about half the states have distinctly recognized a right of publicity.

If the right of publicity seems familiar, you may have heard about the recent case where voice actor Beverly Standing sued TikTok in federal court for using her voice without her permission. (The case was settled out of court.) The first line in the legal complaint asserted

The post Right of Publicity appeared first on Karen Commins.

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I didn’t just gather info for my site. I wrote most of it, which took considerable time and effort, not to mention the years spent in gaining the knowledge to start with.

Everything on my site is my copyrighted material with a few exceptions:

• A good number of the links and most of the embedded videos point to copyrighted info on other sites. Many of the articles and videos I link to are mine!
• Some narrators and producers have generously given me permission to republish their copyrighted words in my Knowledge Base articles.

Copyright owners have the rights to control how their work goes forth in the world, including:

• reproduction
• distribution
• performance
• display
• derivative products like translations

My aim is to create more content, not translate what I’ve already done.

If I decide in the future to translate the site, I would hire the translators and own the translated text. Such translations would only appear on my site.

I therefore am declining any request to translate any part of my site.

Note: I hold the same policy about my blog articles on this site but have given permission for my articles to be re-published as written and with link and attribution.

However, I would encourage you to think about how you could create and share your own original material. 

We all have unique experiences, views, and ways of expressing ourselves, even when we’re talking about the same topic. You could write a blog, produce a podcast, create videos, design inspirational/informative graphics, etc. You could create a variety of things as it suits you and your purpose.

When I worked my day job in IT, users and my peers considered me an expert. I helped other system admins solve technical problems and taught the users how their software and hardware worked.

I began working in VO in 1999 and started my first advice page on my site in 2002. I have been writing my blog since 2006. As I shared posts, people in the industry got to know and trust me through my blog. Soon, people began referring others to my blog.

NarratorsRoadmap.com is an extension not only of my blog and advice I’d given online and in emails for years, but of my personality and whole approach to being of service.

My point is: If you start creating and sharing your own content, you never know where it will lead!

I found Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered to be VERY helpful and inspirational in connecting the dots about growing an audience. Basically, he contends — and I agree — that If you can think of ways to document things about your work processes, an interested audience will make its way to you.

Let me know if you create something along these lines. I may want to link to you!

The post Creating Original Material appeared first on Karen Commins.

Material in the public domain belongs to ALL of us. You can use public domain material for any purpose you want without licensing it or paying royalties to anyone.

Public domain books are a boon to creative, entrepreneurial narrators! I made a video course exclusively for members of my NarratorsRoadmap.com site called Create Your Own Path. The first video discusses how to research the copyright information to determine whether a book is in the public domain. (I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out that the course has its own set of resources, including collections of public domain books I’ve created for members to peruse for possible projects!)

When planning your cover art for public domain books, consider these quotes pulled from this Publishers Weekly article about publishing new editions of public domain texts:

“It’s been 95 years since they were published in the United States — so we’re thinking about how we can present them as fresh and relevant.”

“The design process for reimagining classic covers also requires a special sort of attention…You just need a cover that’s going to jump out from all the other covers.”

“I always feel it’s important to create covers for classic authors that they would appreciate. I think it’s really important to be respectful of the text.”

Many people who create audiobooks from public domain texts also look to use public domain artwork for their audiobook covers. I’ve done that with a number of books, including:

I found the image for JAILED FOR FREEDOM on the Library of Congress site. The sun on THE DYNAMIC LAWS OF PROSPERITY came from NASA.

You may even need to layer images to achieve the look you want. In the case of SO BIG, my cover designer found a perfect antique, public domain painting of the woman standing in the cabbage field. Meanwhile, I found a modern photograph of a farm boy squatting in a field on a commercial site of stock images. I bought the picture for around $15 and then used Photoshop to place him in the image of the painting with Photoshop. I used a number of filters and effects to give him the same look as the original painting. Since the painting was public domain, I had complete freedom to alter it in this way for my cover.

Since I’ve seen a number of posts from narrators looking for sources of public domain illustrations, I thought I’d curate a handy list for all of us! Note that I’m not including the plethora of sites with modern stock images or that may charge fees for usage.

Commercial Sites

While a piece of art might be in the public domain, a contemporary photographer may hold a copyright on their picture of the art. Be sure to do due diligence to ensure that an image you want to use is in the public domain or may be used without restriction.

Flickr.com
You can specify on your search that you’re looking for “No known copyright restrictions”, “U.S. Government works”, or other license choices.

• Note the Internet Archive Book Images stream has over 5 million images, with a majority taken from vintage books now in the PD.
  • Some of their images may still be copyrighted, so double-check anything with a publication date between 1931-1963. Anything published in 1964 and later is still copyrighted.
  • Narrator Angie Hickman shared this search tip: You can enter the search “bookyearXXXX” where XXXX is the 4-digit year and see only images published that year.

Google
The advanced search allows you to choose usage rights among all, Creative Commons, and commercial.

HeritageLibrary
You’ll find multiple vintage illustrations of the same theme bundled on the same image.

RawPixel
This site has a number of categories of images, including artists and animals.

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia offers over 75 million pictures that you can download and use. Its topic searches are useful for zeroing in on useful images.

Federal Government

Work created by federal government employees in their official duties and/or issued by government offices generally is not copyrighted and is in the public domain. This page offers a fuller explanation about copyright exceptions on government works.

A number of government sites contain searchable directories of images, including:

NASA

National Archives

National Parks Service

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Pomological Watercolor Collection

This site describes and links to image libraries for over a dozen agencies.

Libraries

Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature
The Smithsonian called this site a treasure trove of digitized, Victorian-era children’s books.

Biodiversity Heritage Library
If you’re looking for flora and fauna, you’ll want to search the images here.

British Library
The British Library posts on Flickr, with pictures categorized into albums. Of special interest are the 2 collections:

• Topographical Collection of King George III 268 albums — lots of great maps and more
• Gothic Novel Jam 2018 4 albums of castles, ghosts and ghoulish scenes, illustrated letters and typography, and myths and creatures

Library of Congress
This page shows a sample of the collections owned by the Library of Congress. However, they have so much more content that’s not linked here. I’ve found it helpful to do a Google site search on the main LoC.gov for the type of image I want, for example:

site:loc.gov 19th amendment suffragists      then click Images when the search results appear

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Over 400,000 high-res images are available for open access download in this searchable database.

New York Public Library
You can do a general search or get really specific with a topic and/or genre search.

Museums

Cleveland Museum of Art
The museum offers “Open Access with Creative Commons: images, data and software CMA believes to be in the public domain, or that which CMA waives any copyright it might have .”

Digital Comic Book Museum
The site states: “All files here have been researched by our staff and users to make sure they are copyright free and in the public domain.”  An Excel list of comics is linked in the forum FAQs.

J. Paul Getty Museum
The Getty has made images to which it owns the copyright along with public domain images available for download and free usage.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Over 400,000 of the Met’s public domain images are available through its Open Access policy. This page has links to 20 thematic sets of images.

Museo.app
Presently, this site will search the following holdings:

• Art Institute of Chicago
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Harvard Art Museum
• Minneapolis Institute of Art
• New York Public Library Digital Collection
• Rijksmuseum

Smithsonian Open Access
You can choose from more than 3 million images “from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.”

Specialized Repositories 

Old Book Illustrations
While searching for an illustration for a recent blog article, I found this site that specializes in Victorian and French Romantic illustrations.

Public Domain Review
Highlighting wonderful works in the public domain is the mission of this site. You can browse images by epoch, style, or theme. You may want to subscribe to their newsletter while you’re there.

Public Domain Image Archive
This site is the sister to the one above and limits its offerings to images.

Do you have a favorite site for public domain images? Please share it in the comments!

The post Tour of Sites With Public Domain Art appeared first on Karen Commins.

Narrator Pamela Almand recently wrote to me about images in a public domain book from a deceased author that she plans to narrate and produce as an audiobook. She kindly gave me permission to re-publish her question here so that more people can benefit from this discussion.

I have a question from you since you’ve done a bunch of these and are the acclaimed guru! I love the photographs included in the book and wonder if you’ve ever searched rights for illustrations or if, by virtue of them being in a PD title, they are considered PD also. I would love to add a downloadable pdf of the photos but don’t really know if that is allowed. If you can point me toward a resource I’d really appreciate it!

As you might imagine, this seemingly easy question has a complicated answer.

I’ll break it down in 3 parts.

The Law

Books and pictures published in the US before or during 1930 are in the public domain. Each 1 January, a new year’s worth of books enter the public domain. On 1 January 2027, all books published in the US 1931 will enter the public domain, and so on.

In Pam’s case, the book was published in 1928. Using the links on this page, she determined the copyright wasn’t renewed, so the book is in the public domain.

However, the copyright owner(s) of many of the photographs in the book were different from the author, who was the copyright owner of the text. We don’t know the original publication dates of the images. As a result, it’s possible some of the pictures in the book remain under copyright.

The picture caption/attribution would indicate the copyright owner with language like “used by permission” or even a copyright symbol. If it doesn’t include such verbiage next to the picture or in a list elsewhere in the book, like on the copyright page or in the Acknowledgements, to indicate different ownership of the picture, the image would be the author’s and therefore could be included in her text copyright.

For instance, a page of plane maneuver pictures in Pam’s book states “Courtesy Standard Oil Company of Indiana” at the bottom.

Copyright owners maintain the separate rights to control copies and derivative products. You’d need the copyright owner’s permission to redistribute their image in your PDF. Technically, they could have given permission for the picture to appear in the printed book but could refuse your request to redistribute a copy in a PDF to accompany the audiobook.

In the booklet Managing Intellectual Property in the Book Publishing Industry published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), we find the crux of the problem:

Rights owners of photographs will normally give a non-exclusive license for reproduction of the picture. This means it can be used once for the purpose and in the position requested, and may not even cover reprints (in other words, permission may need to be obtained every time the book is reprinted). So, if a publisher approaches a third party for permission to reproduce a photograph, he should expect the right granted to be quite limited. If later he wants to include that same photograph in another title or in a new edition (like a paperback), or he decides to change its size and put it on the cover, he will need to seek a fresh permission.

From a practical standpoint, the copyright owner may have passed away or, in the case of a company, no longer exist, though that point doesn’t give us permission to stop looking for them.

The images in question are illustrations and photographs that depict historical aircraft and various people associated with flying.

Going back to the plane maneuver pictures mentioned above, a quick Google search shows me that Standard Oil Company of Indiana merged with American Oil in 1925. They changed to the Amoco name in 1985, and in the 90s, Amoco merged with BP. Even if one could find the correct person in BP’s labyrinth to contact for permission, I think they probably would not answer.

The WIPO document addresses the scenarios of copyright owners who can’t be found and those who can be found but don’t respond:

Works should never be used without permission (right owner authorization, legal permission) in one form or another. In some cases when the excerpt is very small or very old (in other words, it is not sure whether or not it is still in copyright), or if it was not possible to track down the rights owner, publishers proceed with publication. In these unfortunate cases if several failed attempts have been made to trace the rights owner, evidence thereof is often collected (copies of letters, envelopes returned with messages such as ‘gone away’ or ‘not known’, a brief log of e-mails or phone calls that did not reach their destination, with a view to improving the legal standing of the publisher. These cases are different from those where the identity and location of the author are known and established, but he just chooses not to respond to the repeated requests. A court would regard this second example as tantamount to a refusal.

What About Fair Use?

While I am not a lawyer, it’s tempting to make an argument for including all of the pictures in the book in the PDF to accompany the audiobook. In the extremely unlikely event a copyright owner challenged your usage of a picture, you could either remove the picture from the PDF or cite the fair usage standard of copyright.

Fair Use rests on 4 subjective tests, which are, as quoted from the Stanford article linked above:

• the purpose and character of your use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion taken
• the effect of the use upon the potential market or future value of the copyrighted work

The Stanford article also states:

Because the dissemination of facts or information benefits the public, you have more leeway to copy from factual works.

The WIPO document linked in the previous section advises us:

It must be borne in mind too, that there is no fair dealing precedent for illustration or web content – the ruling generally applies only to text. One of the reasons for this is that by reproducing a photograph or a picture, a whole work, not a part of it, is being reproduced.

How to Proceed

In this particular case, I’d create a supplemental PDF using all of the author’s pictures from the book, assuming the scanned images are suitable to reprint. I’d substitute images that are known to be public domain for any pictures potentially still under copyright.

As an example, an image of the Pan Am Clipper Ship is marked “Courtesy of Pan Am Airlines”, so it would have been the company’s copyrighted picture at the time the book was published. You could download and use the large JPG of this image from the Library of Congress in its place. The LoC is a great place to find public domain images.

This guide explains how to create the PDF. Your distributor(s) should have instructions for attaching the PDF with your recordings. For example, you would follow guidance on this page in the ACX help section or this page in the Findaway Voices support area.

Check out this article, which lists a number of sites where you can find public domain images.

Also, before you use an image of a person, be sure to read Right of Publicity as you could still run afoul of the law even with a public domain picture.

The post Copyrighted Images in a Public Domain Book appeared first on Karen Commins.