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MAGAZINE

Issue #2

You May Give Away Or Share This Magazine With


ANYONE As Long As You Follow These Rules….

1) You May Not Sell This Magazine


2) You May Not Modify This Magazine In Any Way
3) You May Not Claim Authorship

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and

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Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

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The material in this magazine does not constitute legal advice, only the author’s
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Have a nice day!

Page 2

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

Introduction
Dear Reader,

Welcome aboard the second


issue of "Public Domain
Treasure Hunter Magazine",
the only digital magazine
exploring ingeniously creative
and outrageously lucrative
ways to profit from the public
domain! This magazine is
dedicated to exploring unique
and little known ways to
repackage and republish public
domain material for fun and
profit.

In this second issue of "Public


Domain Treasure Hunter
Magazine" we will be
discussing 11 different ways of
profiting from “golden age”
public domain comic books.
The good thing for you and I is
that there’s not many people
doing this because they just
haven’t thought of it yet!

When most people think of the


public domain, they think of
old books, novels, plays, and
artwork but did you realize
that there are thousands of
comic books in the public
domain as well?

Maybe you have at some point


considered this fact and then
blew off the idea because you
thought there was no market
for old comic books. At one
time, I held the same
perspective until I learned that
nothing could be farther from the truth! Comic books and comic book art are hot and not
just in the U.S. but all over the world. There are so many great applications for vintage
comic book art that you would definitely be making a huge mistake not to at least take a
look and see what’s available.

Page 3

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

Now, I have a confession to make – I love comic books! Always have, always will. They’re
embedded in my heart and soul. I don’t actively read them anymore but they provide fond
memories of childhood and I’ll never forget some of my favorite titles.

I remember when I was a little boy growing up in Miami I would get up early every
Saturday morning and peddle my bicycle down the highway picking up pop bottles on the
way to the store so I could collect the deposits and scrape up enough change to buy comic
books! I’d buy as many comic books as I could and then peddle like mad back home so that
I could sit on the front porch and devour every issue. I couldn’t wait to read about the latest
exploits of my favorite comic book heroes!

Yeah, I was a geek. Still am really. But that’s O.K., you don’t have to be a geek to make out
like a bandit stealing material from old public domain comic books – and that’s what this
month’s issue is all about.

In this issue, I’m going to show you 11 different creative ways to cash in on “golden age”
public domain comic books, some of which you may have never even considered.

So come along with me my friend and let’s so back to a simpler time when men were men
and women were women and a comic book would only set you back 10 cents.

Oh, and don’t forget your cape and tights – you may just need them.

In the words of the legendary long-time Marvel Editor-in-Chief Stan Lee, “‘Nuff Said”.

Read on and profit my friend!

Logan Andrew
Editor & Contributor,
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”

Page 4

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

A Crash Course In Comic Book History…


Comic books have had a very colorful history in the U.S. and
they are truly an all-American art form! In order to understand
why public domain comics are so valuable, you'll need to
understand a little about what they are and where they came
from so in this section I’ll give you a brief history of comic
books.

If you want the by-the-book stone cold definition, a comic


book -- or comic for short -- is a magazine or book containing
sequential art in the form of a narrative. If you want my
definition, comic books are little 30-page magic carpet rides
through wildly imaginative new worlds of fun, romance, and
adventure.

Comic books came to exist in the U.S. in their modern format


with the introduction of “Famous Funnies” in the 1930’s.
Japan, France, Italy, and Belgium have also had a long
tradition in comic books, but it’s U.S. “Golden Age” comic
books that we will be discussing here.

The “Golden Age” of U.S. comic books (as coined by fans) is a duration in comic book
history marked by the arrival of “Superman” in 1938 and lasting into the early 1950’s. If
you would like to learn more about the various “ages” in comic book history Click Here.

These golden age comics were extremely popular in the U.S. and are most notable for
introducing the concept of the “superhero” into our imaginations – ordinary people with
extraordinary abilities, outrageous costumes, and the seemingly never-ending capacity for
grand larger-than-life adventures. You’ll find a lot more than just superhero stories in these
comics though. These comics spread across all kinds of genres – western, science fiction,
horror, mystery, fantasy, adventure, crime, and war just to name a few.

There were lots of comic book publishers that contributed to the golden age of comics, the
two most recognized of which are D.C. comics (Detective Comics) and Marvel comics
(known as Timely comics at that time). Being the two most prominent players in the comic
book field with each enjoying measures of success that have allowed them to stay in
business even until today, you can bet that they never let the copyright protection on any of
their comics lapse so you won’t find anything by D.C. or Marvel in the public domain.

But here’s the fascinating part – many of the other smaller publishers of the golden age,
many of which produced titles that were just as successful at the time as titles held by D.C.
and Marvel did let copyright protection lapse by not renewing in the 28th year after
publication as required by U.S. copyright law for works produced between 1923 and 1963.

What this means for us as re-publishers is that there are now potentially thousands of great
high-quality (and some not so high-quality) golden age comic books in the public domain
that we can do whatever we want with.

Page 5

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

Now, while you will not find any Superman comics (probably the most famous superhero of
all) in the public domain (although there are some early cartoons), you will find tons of
great comics from publishers such as Ace Comics, Charlton Comics, Fawcett Comics,
Quality Comics, and others with such great titles like “Exciting Comics”,
“Amazing Adventures”, “Amazing Ghost Stories” and such colorful and dynamic
superheroes as The Black Terror, Bulletman, The American Eagle, Daredevil, The
Blue Beetle, The Black Hood, and many, many more.

And of course, you’ll find more adventure, horror, western, true crime, and war themed
comics than you can shake a proverbial stick at! Explore and have fun and I know you’ll
uncover lots of wonderful hidden treasures and of course, this issue of “Pirates” will give
you lots of ideas that you can use to profit from this material.

Oh, and just a word of warning – a good deal of these golden age comics are very politically
incorrect. You have to realize we’re dealing with 40’s and 50’s mindsets here. For instance,
EVERYBODY smokes cigarettes, even the heroes. In comics published in the years leading
up to and during World War II there’s a lot of German and Japanese bashing going on
(especially in the super-hero and war comics). A good many of the male heroes from this
timeframe seem to harbor rather sexist views of women. Most of this stuff was produced
before the there was such a thing as the Comics Code Authority to step in and clean
things up. But all in all, these comic books were just about having good, clean fun.

Well, now you know a little about the history of the old public domain comics. Now let’s
learn about how we can use them to put a little extra money in our pockets! On with the
show….

Page 6

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books


For Fun and Profit!

Page 7

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#1 – Simply Republish Public Domain Comic Books


“As-Is”!
Without doubt, the absolute easiest way to turn a profit with public domain comic books is
to just simply republished them exactly “as-is”, no editing, no touch-up work - just scan
‘em in and roll ‘em out. This requires very little creativity on your part and it’s pretty easy to
do. You could republish them one issue at a time but that would be pretty silly since it’s
hard to command high dollars for a single issue of a comic book (a reproduction anyway).

Here are some ways that you can republish public domain comics “as-is” in a format you
can demand top dollar for:

1. Republish As Hardcover or Softcover "Omnibus" Editions - One of the best


way to republish public domain comic books "as-is" is to collect 10 or so issues and
package them together into one book grouped by either a particular series or by a
particular theme. For instance you could take issues of "The Black Terror" as
shown in the image on the previous pasge and collect them together in one book or
you could have a themed collection that collects public domain comics from particular
genresllikelwestern,lhorror,lwar,lsuperhero,ldetective,lsciencelfiction,lfantasy,letc.

2. Monthly Printed Magazine - How about collecting public domain comic books and
using them as content for a monthly magazine that you could charge a monthly
subscription for? Each magazine could feature 3 to 4 public domain comics. You
could even easily "niche" this out and have several different monthly magazines
covering different themes like horror, science fiction, etc. Don't be surprised if many
of your customer's are subscribed to several of your magazines at the same time!

3. Republish As Digital eComics On CD / DVD - Here's probably one of the easiest


methods of all - take the scans you made of your public domain comic books and
convert them into PDF format. Then dump then onto a CD or DVD and sell them as
collections. You could have a whole series of CD's or DVD’s to present to your
customers and the cool thing is it's really inexpensive to produce a really professional
CD or DVD using a print-on-demand service like SwiftCD or Kunaki. Again, you
couldlorganizelyourlCD'slbylserieslorltheme.

In my experience, if you are scanning in your comics at a decent resolution (the


higher, the better), an average 30 page comic will convert to a PDF with a file size of
somewhere around 30Mb on average. Since a CD holds roughly 700 Megabytes of
data, you could squeeze somewhere around 23 issues onto one CD. Holding roughly
4.7 Gigs of data, you could squeeze roughly 156 issues onto a DVD. I wouldn't fill
these things to capacity though as you'll want to spread them across more than one
disclsolthatlyou'lllhavelmultiplelvolumesltoloffer.

4. Membership Site / Digital Downloads - How about this? Create an exclusive


vintage comic book membership site and present your comic books as digital
downloads. You could upload new comics every month and your members could login
and download them to their computers or even better, you could figure out a way to

Page 8

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

make them non-downloadable yet still viewable. This would cut down on the number
of people that just sign-up every six months, download everything and then cancel
their membership. You could completely control the distribution of your comics.

Membership sites are a fantastic way of generating recurring revenue and just think
- if you can convince just 1000 comic book lovers to pay you $10.00 per month for
access to the site, then you’re making $10,000 a month easy! You could also
implement features like a forum, where your members could have discussions about
all of their favorite comics and other "sticky" features that promote long-term
memberlretention.

Page 9

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#2 - Translate Public Domain Comic Books


Into Different Languages!

This method will work for any public domain book and it will work especially well for public
domain comic books. Using graphic editing software like Adobe Photoshop, you could
easily take your comics (once you've digitized them) and import each of the page images.
Then you could "white out" the cartoon dialogue bubbles, replacing the text in English with
the same text in another language. You'll need to purchase a "comic-book" style font.
ComicBookFonts.com is one of many great places to find killer comic book style fonts.

This is a great method to use especially if live in a country where English is not the primary
language or if you plan on marketing the books in a country where English is not the
primary language. Of course, having a mastery of the language you intend on translating
your comic books dialogue into is a must unless you plan on hiring someone to translate the
comics for you.

Just think, by translating your public domain comic books into other languages you could
tap into a whole world of otherwise neglected international markets and introduce these
long-lost treasures to a whole new demographic of readers!

Before you dismiss the potential of this method consider these facts:

There are currently over 6 billion people living on this rock we call Urth and of those 6
billion:

• Overl1lbillionlpeoplelspeaklMandarin

• 508lmillionlpeoplelspeaklEnglish

• 497lmillionlpeoplelspeaklHindustani

• 392lmillionlpeoplelspeaklSpanish

Page 10

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

• 277lmillionlpeoplelspeaklRussian

• 246lmillionlpeoplelspeaklArabic

• 211lmillionlpeoplelspeaklBengali

• 191lmillionlpeoplelspeaklPortuguese

• 159lmillionlpeoplelspeaklMalay-Indonesian

• 129 million people speak French

And that's just the top ten languages spoken in the world. You've still got German, Italian,
Japanese, and a whole slew of others as well! Granted, all of these people are not going to
be comic book readers but, you get my point. The market could be huge. SOURCE

Page 11

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#3l-lRepublish Public Domain Comics By Tapping Into The


Power of “Reimagination”!

Remember way back in Public Domain Treasure Hunter Issue #1 when we talked about
“reimagineering” old public domain movies by wiping the soundtrack clean and adding
fresh humorous and deliriously corny dialogue? Well, guess what – you can do that with
comic books even quicker and easier!

Just like with Method #3 above, you could easily import each of your page images into
Adobe Photoshop and “white out” the cartoon dialogue bubbles. Then you could replace
the existing dialogue with zany off-the-wall one liners and just plain silliness. Just like those
old public domain movies some of these comics are so campy they’re just begging to be fun
of.lRememberlMadlMovies?lHowl’boutlMadlComics?

Just have fun with it and let your imagination run wild! You could republish whole issues
using this method but I’ll tell you something else this method works really well for as well –
advertising! Using a simple short panel layout like the one above works remarkably well.

There’s something about a comic strip panel that just absolutely will not let you glance by it
without stopping to read it first! C’mon, admit it – you read the panel above as soon as you
placed your eyes on it didn’t you? You couldn’t help it! Using a panel like the one above
works great in advertising because it takes people’s guard down immediately and gets them
to read your ad without even realizing they are reading an ad! And if you can make ‘em
laugh that’s even better! You could use this method with banner ads on the internet as well.

Page 12

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#4 - Create Exciting New "Derivative" Works!


Creating a derivative work simply means that you take a work, and then build upon that
work creating something entirely new in the process. Old public domain comics are an
absolute goldmine of creative ideas, innovative story telling techniques, and unique visual
concepts.

Many of these comic books were authored by some true masters of storytelling and
illustrated by some of the greatest sketch artists to ever hold a pencil. Most of them
eventually went on to create comic books for the big boys like Marvel Comics and D.C.
Comics.

Imagine all of the material that public domain comic books could provide you with in the
creation of film scripts, animated cartoons, and even novels. Stuck on a plot idea for your
next novel? Beating your head in trying to think up a fresh idea for a movie script? Want to
create a new cartoon series but short on original character ideas?

Look no further than that stack of old public domain comic books. It would take you years
to exhaust all of the possible ideas that you could extract from them!

Page 13

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#5 - Create Your Own Line Of Retro-Cool


Vintage Clothing!
How about using public domain comic book art to create an entire line of hip apparel? Comic
books cover images (and even images from the pages themselves) look really cool on t-
shirts! Over the past few years a trend has emerged for vintage clothing with classic images
like t-shirts with old cartoon or cereal box characters or even video game characters on
them.

I would bet that the same crowd that's into that stuff would really dig clothes decorated
with golden age comic book art. You could use images from public domain comic books to
create all sorts of nifty apparel. Check out some of the stylin' threads I created at Zazzle in
just a few minutes using public domain comic book covers...

Page 14

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#6 - Use Public Domain Comic Book Cover Images To Create


Jaw-Droppingly Beautiful Posters and Framed Prints!
What's usually the best part of a comic book as far as visual appeal? That's right - the
cover. Generally, the cover always receives the most attention by the illustrators because
it's the cover you see first peeking at you from the magazine rack. It's the cover that
catches your attention and seduces you into spending your lunch money.

The covers of these golden age comics are usually brilliantly colored, bright and vibrant.
Sometimes, they’re dark and moody depending on the theme, but nevertheless they're
almost always beautifully and skillfully drawn. Comic art is an art all to itself and even
people that don't read comic books can appreciate it. Vintage pop-art is hot!

You can use this to your advantage by using comic cover art to create posters and framed
prints like these groovy framed prints I created on CafePress in less than five minutes…

When creating posters and framed prints, image quality counts so make sure that you are
scanning in the covers at as high a resolution as possible and then use a graphics editing
program like Adobe Photoshop to clean up any imperfections and tweak the brightness.

Page 15

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#7 - Comic Book Art Clip Art Collections!


It never ceases to amaze me how well clip-art and stock images sell online. I guess it
makes sense when you consider that there's millions of websites on the 'net and they
constantly need graphics!

“Retro” and “Vintage Look” graphics enjoy brisk sales online (see RetroClipArt.com for
some examples) and you could easily put together a collection for sale on CD by clipping
them from public domain comic books.

Public domain comics are an absolute treasure chest of high-quality images especially when
it comes to human facial expressions. In any given single issue of a public domain comic
you could probably find facial expressions that cover the whole range of human emotions.

Start clippin’ and snippin’ cause you’ll find a virtually unlimited supply of great clip-art in
public domain comics for people to use as graphic images on their websites, in their
advertising, in their documents – whatever!

It wouldn’t take long at all to produce a CD containing thousand’s of great images!

Page 16

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#8 - A Unique Way To Use Public Domain Comic Books To


Create Flash Videos And Viral Traffic!
Here's a really unique idea that I don't really see anyone doing yet - Use public domain
comics to create flash videos and upload them to online video sharing sites like YouTube
and Google Video and use the videos to drive insane amounts of traffic back to your
website.

Here's how you do it - You can really bring an old comic to life by using a screen capture
recording application like Camtasia Studio to "record" your comic book. If you arrange the
panels from the pages in your comic book and then play them back in a slide show
presentation, you can record the slide show on your computer screen to produce the visual
elements of your video.

Then add your own soundtrack to produce the audio elements. You could narrate the
dialogue (using different voices for each character of course), and add your own sound
effects (BAM! WACK! CRASH!), and even add your own music soundtrack for dramatic effect
(public domain music of course).

I don’t know anyone that is currently using this method so I don’t have a perfect example to
show you. You’ll have to use your imagination! But you’ll get a pretty good idea of what I’m
talking about by checking out the links below…(BTW, none of these are public domain
comics)

Click Here for a trailer for the “Spiderman 3” movie made from various Spiderman comics…
Click Here to watch a trailer for the “300” movie made from the graphic novel….
Click Here to for a fun video I just wanted to add because it made me laugh…

Page 17

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#9 - Use Public Domain Comic Book Images To Create Unique


Physical Products!
You can put public domain comic book images on just about anything you could possibly
imagine. The only restriction is the age old question – “will it sell?”. The interior panel
illustrations of a comic work great with novelty items like coffee mugs (especially in
combination with Method #3) and such while the cover art works great for clothing and
more “artsy” type items. I’ve included some goofy products I created using CafePress to
serve as a visual aid. There’s no limit to the kind of products you can create except your
imagination, your time, and your manufacturing contacts. BTW, if you would like to order
this cool Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine BBQ Apron, shoot me an email!

Page 18

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#10 - Don't Forget About Those Great Full Page Ads Found In
Public Domain Comics!
And don't forget about the vintage ads! When I was a little boy I used to drool over the
goofy little one page ads that ran rampant through my comic books - Wow! 100 little green
army men and a plastic tank for $1.00! A miniature "spy" camera for just a buck? I used
bug my mother relentlessly for a dollar every time I saw one of these ads but she never
gave in. She was a wise woman. It wasn’t until years later that I found out that most of the
products in these ads were total rip-offs designed to cheat little kids out of their money but
that’s not the point. The point is these ads were just plain fun. They remind a lot of people
of their childhood days. Ahhh, smell the nostalgia!

How can you profit from these goofy ads? Well, you could publish a collectable book of
classic comic book ads called, “Mom, Gimme A Dollar!” or you could sell these ads on
eBay. Yeah, believe it or not, there’s people clipping the classic advertisements out of old
magazines and selling them on eBay – and they sell well too!

The big difference here is that, since these ads are from comic books in the public domain,
you could reproduce them in volume and sell them over and over again rather than making
a one time sale. Think about it! Here’s a few examples….

Page 19

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

Page 20

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

#11 - Public Domain Comics Mix-N-Match!


The real beauty of the last 10 methods for using public domain comics books is that you can
easily mix and match methods to fit your needs. No matter what marketing tactics you
employ you’ll find at least a handful (if not all) of these methods useful.

You could sell a softcover omnibus edition on eBay and then invite people that buy your
book to join your membership site or visit your online store stocked full of merchandise like
t-shirts, framed prints, posters and more.

You could create flash videos like we discussed in Method #8 and post them on YouTube
driving traffic back to your membership site and / or online store. You could place
downloadable PDF sample versions of your comics on document sites like Scribd and
include a link back to your website within the e-book.

There are so many possibilities! And with a market as hardcore as comic book lovers you
should do really well. Trust me, I know a few hardcore comic book fanatics. When they love
a comic they just have to own all the related merchandise as well!

Quick Tips For Working With Public Domain Comic Books:


• For graphics editing and formatting, you’ll need a good graphics editor like
Photoshop or GIMPShop and at least a passing familiarization with the software or
alwillingnessltollearn.

• To digitize your public domain comic books, you’ll need a decent flat bed scanner
(unlesslyouldon’tlmindlremovinglpages).

• You’ll need to have a decent computer with plenty of horsepower in reserve.


Scanninglandlgraphiclworkltakelquitelalbitloflsystemlresources.

• Finding old public domain comic books is easy using auction sites like eBay or by
trollinglyardlandlestatelsales.lTherelarelalsolalfewlgoodlonlinelrepositories.

• To determine the copyright status of any comic book published in the U.S., follow
U.S. Copyright Duration Law. “Golden Age” comics fall under the rules governing
all works published in the U.S. between the years of 1923 and 1963. In order to
have retained copyright protection, the comic book must have had its copyright
renewed in the 28th year after initial publication. If it was not renewed, it’s in the
public domain. For more information about understanding U.S. Copyright
Law1and1finding1andlprofitinglfromlpublicldomainlworksloflalllkinds,lvisit
PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com/kit.html.

Page 21

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

In Closing….

We’ll there you go – 11 creative ways to republish public domain comic books for fun and
profit. Which method will you use? In any case, I bet you’ll look at comic books in whole
new light now!

What we’ve discussed in this issue is just one of the nearly endless creative and profitable
ways to make money and have fun with public domain material. If this method appeals to
you then take it and run with. Go nuts! Create something that’ll set the internet on fire! Just
don’t forget to send me copy….

Hey, do me a favor – if you enjoyed this issue of “Public Domain Treasure Hunter
Magazine”, drop by our blog at PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com and leave a
comment for us. Let us know what you think!

If enough people leave positive feedback, we may get motivated to quit reading comic
books long enough to put together Issue #3!

Until next time, let’s go plunder the vast treasures of the public domain!

To your success,

Logan Andrew
Editor & Contributor, “Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”

Page 22

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
Thought Rocket Publishing presents….
“Public Domain Treasure Hunter Magazine”
Issue #2 - "11 Creative Ways To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun and Profit!"

Page 23

© 2008 Thought Rocket Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com
Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.
"How To Make Money Republishing
Copyright-Expired Books, Magazines,
Photos, & More..."
Once You Know How To Identify, Repackage and Market These
Copyright-FREE Treasures, You’ll Have A Serious GOLDMINE
Of Unlimited Niche Content On Your Hands!

Click Here Now To Find Out More…

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