Publish beautiful modern editions of public domain books
Every year a new batch of books falls out of copyright, and most of them are sold as ugly, unedited reprints. Choose a work that's free where you sell it, write the introduction and notes a modern reader needs, typeset it properly with Typst, and publish it on Amazon KDP and IngramSpark as part of a series. AI is your research assistant and editor; the scholarship and the taste are yours.
- A cover size calculator built on KDP's own formulas, and prompts for cover concepts
- The publishing maths: royalty per copy, the 35% ebook rule for public domain, build hours, series strategy and launch outreach
- Python 3.9+ and uv ↗. New to the terminal? Terminal survival kit
- Typst (free). Installed in step 5, or run through uv with nothing to install
- A free KDP account (Amazon) and optionally IngramSpark, set up yourself when you're ready to publish
- A genuine interest in one kind of book. You'll spend 30 or more hours with each one
Why modern editions of old books still sell
See where the opportunity is, and why the cheap reprints leave it open.
Search Amazon for almost any classic and you'll find the same thingdozens of editions, most of them a scanned text dumped into a template, with no introduction, no notes, broken italics and a stock-photo cover. A student, a book club or a curious reader wants the opposite: a clean page, notes that explain what 1813 took for granted, and an introduction that makes them want to start reading. That edition often doesn't exist.
The rules push qualityAmazon KDP only accepts a public domain book if it's genuinely different: translated, annotated with original notes, or illustrated with 10 or more original illustrations, labelled in the title as "(Annotated)", "(Illustrated)" or "(Translated)". If a free version is already in the store, only a differentiated edition is allowed (KDP public domain guide ↗). The lazy reprints are exactly what the rules are designed to stop. Your edition is what they're designed to let through.
Where AI fitsIt reads a chapter and lists every word a 16-year-old would stumble on in seconds. It suggests a structure for your introduction, tightens your notes and drafts discussion questions. It doesn't do your research or your writing: notes must be accurate and original, and AI-generated text has to be declared to KDP. Used as an assistant, it takes hours off every title.
Careful- What it takes. About 30 to 40 hours per title for a novel: text prep, research, an introduction, notes on every tricky page, typesetting and a cover.
- Patience: books sell slowly at first and build as the series grows, so think in series of four or more, not single titles.
- Accuracy: every note checked against a reliable source.
- Small sums per copy: around £2 a paperback and £1 an ebook (step 7 shows the maths), so this rewards building a catalogue over time.
- Who this suits: you love one kind of book (Victorian ghost stories, early detective fiction, a set-text author), you enjoy research, and you like making beautiful things.
The kitread the kit overview or download everything: the text script, the Typst template, the cover calculator, the edition checklist, prompts, pricing calculator and launch scripts.