What if a Favorite Work is in the Public Domain?

The Dover cover.

I recently discovered that one of my favorite childhood books is in the public domain. The book in question is the 1924 The Box-Car Children by Gertrude C. Warner. In 1942, a shorter version of the book was reissued by Albert Whitman and Company, and a whole series of books followed. Since 2023, Penguin Random House has published the series. 

Only the first book is in the public domain but I quickly pulled out my copy.  Do I have the 1924 title?  No.  I have the 1942 book, but I want to see how different the original is.  Fortunately it has been reissued by Dover. 

Beyond reading both versions, what can I do? I wasn’t sure so I did a bit of research. 

When a book is no longer under copyright, it is in the public domain. It can be reprinted, produced as an ebook, sold and adapted by you, me, or anyone else reading this post. You can even sell your new creation on Kindle. But it has to be differentiated which means that you have somehow made it different from the original. 

There are several ways that you can, according to Kindle, go about this. 

• Translation: If you are fluent enough to translate The Box-Car Children into another language, feel free to do so. You could even create a series with the book translated into Spanish, French, Mandarin, or Twi. 

• Annotation: Not qualified to translate? You could also annotate the book. Annotations are any commentary or explanation added to the original text. Annotations could include historical information such as “At the time this book was published…” Or they could be biographical information about the author and how the book parallels the author’s life. Note: I don’t know that this is the case with The Box-Car Children. I simply used that as an example. 

• Illustration: Are you a skilled illustrator? You can publish a Kindle book in which you have added at least 10 of your own illustrations to the original story. These could be photographs that you have taken, drawings, or digital artwork. 

You can copyright your differentiated work, but there’s a catch. You cannot copyright the original text. This is because it was already copyrighted by someone else. That means that if I were to annotate The Box-Car Children, I would include a note with the copyright statement. “The original children’s novel, The Box-Car Children, is in the public domain. The annotations are my original work and are copyrighted . . ."  

Do I plan to differentiate The Box-Car Children? I do not. But maybe just maybe I’ll differentiate something else. I am curious to see how Dover has made their publication unique.

--SueBE

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Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 60 books for young readers.  

She is also the instructor for 3 WOW classes which begin on the first Monday of every month. She teaches:

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