: Re: Create and publish collection of public domain poems from 19th century Can I create a collection of original 19th century public domain poems without violating copyright laws?

@Turnbaugh521

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While technically you could claim a copyright on your collection, you would not have any claim of copyright for any of the individual poems included in that collection. The problem would be in getting any publisher to allow you to actually publish the collection.

All of the major e-book publishers have very strict guidelines regarding the republishing of public domain works. Amazon's Kindle guidelines in particular expressly forbid the publishing of any public domain works as part of a collection. They specifically require that you differentiate your work from the original in one of the following ways:

• (Translated) - A unique translation

• (Annotated) - Contains annotations (unique, hand-crafted additional
content including study guides, literary critiques, detailed
biographies, or detailed historical context)

• (Illustrated) - Includes 10 or more unique illustrations relevant to
the book

Books that meet this criteria must include (Translated), (Annotated),
or (Illustrated) in the title field.

KDP - Publishing Public Domain Content

It is important to note that this criteria pertains specifically to the republishing of a complete public domain work. If you are trying to publish a collection of works, for example poetry, then their guidelines will not permit you to do so. This is especially true if these poems are freely available on the Internet.

Also, you will want to make absolutely certain that the poems you want to include truly are in the public domain. It is rare that individual poems are registered for a copyright because it is easier for a publisher to copyright a collection or an anthology. If any of the poems you want to use in your collection were copyrighted as part of another collection or an anthology, then that copyright may have been passed along to heirs or other parties.

On top of that, it is not uncommon for poetry to be published in multiple forms. For example, a poem may have been published in two different collections, but the author may have chosen to retain the copyright on only one of those collections. Another possibility is that the rights to a poem were sold to a publisher to be included in an anthology. In this example, the original author might have granted ownership of the copyright to the publisher.

It's a lot easier to ascertain that a full novel is in the public domain because it is essentially a single title. However, with something like poetry or short stories that tend to appear in many types of publications, it is harder to verify that each individual title is truly in the public domain.

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