Karen@KarenCommins.com

Karen Commins

Award Winning

Atlanta Audiobook Share-rator™

public domain

PANAcon Panel and Q&A on Self-Producing Your Work

I’ve been a proud member of the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association (PANA) since its inception. The organization offered its first convention PANAcon last month.

 

PANAcon Virtual Conference is text against the multi-colored PANA logo, which looks like abstract people behind the image of a gold microphone.

When I was asked earlier this year to speak at the first PANAcon on a panel about self-producing your work, I couldn’t say “yes!” fast enough!

If you attended, you should have received an email with links to the videos from all of the sessions. Download all the videos now because they won’t be available after 1 September.

This article and its resources should benefit attendees and non-attendees alike.

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Planning Your Trip to Public Domain World

Updated 8/8/25

 

I receive a lot of questions in general and especially about Public Domain (PD) books since I’ve written a boatload of articles about them. I realize the process can be overwhelming and/or confusing!

Therefore, I wanted to write this article to provide a clear set of repeatable actions which you can use as a checklist in creating your public domain audiobook.

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Art, Blurbs, and Critics for PD Books

I want to 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.

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Public Domain Narration Headquarters

Last updated 9/2/25

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 gorgeous old building is the former Morioka Bank Head Office in Morioka – Iwate, Japan. I found the picture on Wikimedia Commons, where the photographer Daderot generously released it to the public domain.

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!

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Tour of Sites With Public Domain Art

Last updated 12/31/24

 

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:

Jailed For FreedomSo BigThe Dynamic Laws of Prosperity

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.

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