Software Engineer Sells 64,000 “Anne of Green Gables” eBooks

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

So on book tour, people sometimes ask me, "Hey Chris, what's your side hustle?" And I'm always like, "Listen, my whole life is side hustles. That's pretty much all I've done for 20 years, one way or another. I mean, yes, I have this career as an author/podcast or/speaker, et cetera, now." But to me, it all kind of comes down to a collection of side hustles. And I don't really have time for another. But here's the thing.

In making the show, I get inspired all the time. And probably at least once or twice a month, I come across something where I'm like, "Oh, I want to do this." And I even start researching and making notes for about 10 minutes before I come to my senses and say like, "Chris, you already have a really full plate right now. You don't need another side hustle." So as I was working on this episode, I was like, "Well, look, listeners, here's an opportunity. Listen to this episode and go and beat me to this project because I want to do it, but I don't have time." And in this story, a software engineer is dissatisfied with the quality of some public domain eBooks. So he goes on to create a portfolio of his own, offering them for sale on Amazon.

The business goes on to earn six figures in passive income, beginning with a blockbuster hit when he repackages the Anne of Green Gables series and ends up selling 64,000 copies. Then it replicates this success with the book "12 Years a Slave." Now you may wonder, "So if this guy is doing so well, why is he telling you his secrets?" It's basically because there's so much information in the public domain out there, so much freely available info that can be republished, which I'll explain how it works a little bit in the episode. He's really not worried about competition. You're probably not going to be able to compete with him on those titles I just mentioned. He's got thousands of reviews for each of them, and he's selective in the works he chooses for publishing.

So a lot of content exists in public domain, can be used by anyone, many books and characters such as those created by Disney were originally from the public domain. So it's up to you what you do with this content. All right, it is a very interesting one. I enjoyed working on it. I think some people are going to find it fascinating.

So here's a quick shout out to our sponsor, and then I'll tell you the story. It's said that a book is worth reading if it gives you even just one idea that you can use. This has certainly been true for Michigan-based Aaron Kerr, albeit not in the way you might expect. As his wife was reading the popular Anne of Green Gables series to their daughters, she noticed that the Kindle version she was reading from had lots of errors, and was poorly formatted. Family had been buying the Kindle version of each book in the series, and this was a major disappointment.

Even though there was little regret since each book cost just 99 cents, it didn't make sense that the available copies of such a classic were of such low quality. Aaron thought he could do better, and he also knew it was perfectly legal for him to try. But copyright protection for classics such as Anne of Green Gables has long expired. This means that such books are now in the public domain and can be used in any manner. The first thing Aaron did was look on Amazon for another series of the whole books.

After purchasing one of those series for just $1.99, he reviewed the pages, found a bunch of typos and other errors, and began to get them formatted properly. This didn't pose a serious challenge, although it was time consuming. The only actual expense that Aaron incurred was purchasing a high quality stock photograph for $18, which he then used for the book cover. He uploaded the entire series of books onto Amazon and priced them for just 99 cents. In other words, you could spend less than a dollar to download the entire series, not just one of the books.

To sweeten the deal, he also included in his listing links to free audiobooks. Anyone looking for Anne of Green Gables would see that this offer stood out. With this effort, Aaron had gone from scratching his own itch to hoping he could earn a few dollars a month. Things went as he expected at first, it sold about 20 to 30 copies in the next couple of days after he published the series. But the numbers increased exponentially shortly after.

There was a day where the number of books sold jumped to 2,100. Then another day, he would wake up to find that he had sold over 7,300 copies a single day. The Anne of Green Gables series would go on to sell over 65,000 copies in four months and even take the number one spot for overall best-selling book on Kindle, if only for a few minutes in the middle of the night. The success of the series demonstrated to Aaron that public domain publishing could become a viable side business. With a background in web development, he knew he had the necessary skills to continue.

So under the brand Timeless Reads, Aaron would go on to publish several other collections. His strategy was to search on Google for upcoming movies that are based on public domain books and then do his research on the competition on Amazon. For example, he had already published the book 12 Years a Slave, but when he discovered that there would be an upcoming movie, Aaron then created a collection that included not only that particular book, but also other stories that featured similar narratives. When the 12 Years a Slave movie won Best Picture in 2013, interest in the story was extremely high and that led to fantastic sales for his collection. But even with the success under his digital belt, Aaron says that picking which books to publish is ultimately more art than science.

There are a lot of factors involved, so he suggests it's more useful to focus on tangible skills like digital formatting, understanding how publishing platforms work, and selling the books with the right message. Then you can let the publishing platform take over. And that's what happened with Aaron's Anne of Green Gable series. When the book started selling, Amazon's algorithm kicked in and began to recommend the item to others. Moving forward, Aaron advises people to take advantage of digital publishing through Amazon and other platforms.

With low barriers to entry and a huge market of ebook readers, lots of people can make money publishing public domain content. It has certainly proved to be true for Aaron, with him averaging $1400 a month in book royalties over the past six years, and occasionally a lot more during the months when he's landed a hit. Much of this income is entirely passive, although Aaron wants to be clear that he's been successful because he's continued to put out new titles. Over time, revenue from the older titles tends to dry up. Further putting his knowledge to good use, he now even has his own course on public domain publishing as well.

The best part about this adventure has been Aaron's ability to combine his passion for publishing with his skill in technology. Having sat through bad copies of the classics, he's now able to produce quality copies of books for families to enjoy. And as a bonus, he's been able to build a better relationship with his two daughters by reading to them from many of the books. It is a timeless yet modern example of creative thinking applied to action. So this story reminds me a bit of some features we had long ago on Merch by Amazon.

If you're really curious about this, go back and listen to episode 55 and 371. When we featured Merch by Amazon long ago, which is all about making t-shirt designs and uploading these designs, not actually printing or stocking any of the inventory, but Amazon actually doing all the fulfillment when somebody orders the t-shirt, we featured that long ago. And I heard from, probably have heard from, I know I've heard from dozens, if not hundreds of listeners who are out there trying their hand at it. People ask me about it almost every night on the book tour. So the thing is, these situations, Merch by Amazon, public domain publishing, they aren't all going to be wildly successful.

In fact, most people probably won't be successful with it, but it's free to get started and you might learn something. And of course, some of them will go on to be successful. So I think it's the kind of thing where, if you're interested in it, go have fun and experiment, if not with this project, then with something else. And if you do, let me know. If you're able to make it work, especially let me know, I will be happy in saying, go and take my side hustle.

I really want to do this in some ways. I'm not sure exactly what I would do, what kind of public domain content, but something to this effect. I really don't have time. So go and take my idea, go and take all these ideas. We are on episode, what is it, 906 now, a new idea every day.

I hope that these ideas will spark some inspiration for you. That's the goal. And of course, not just inspiration, but also inspiration with action, moving forward, making a little bit of progress each day to get closer to that goal you believe in. All right. The show notes, including links to timeless wisdom, anything else I talked about, whatever we can find about public domain publishing will be at www.sidehustleschool.com/906.

Episode 906, the show continues, much more is on the way. Tell your friends, encourage them to subscribe because it is completely free. We are a listener supported organic community and I hope that wherever you are in the world, you're going to have a good day and you're going to do something to invest in yourself. With that, I'll sign off. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.