The web now hosts many sites where you can download and read out of copyright books for free. Project Gutenberg is perhaps the best known of these sites. Go into your normal book retailer and browse their shelves chances are that you’ll find copies of classics like Penguin do a great line in Popular Classics. But what if you came across and old non-fiction book, apparently out of copyright can you re-work it and publish it under your own name.

It is possible buy you’re getting into a couple of interesting, and very tricky, legal areas with this idea. In reality you are probably not the first person to have though of doing this but while it is doable there are pitfalls.

The first question you have to consider is copyright law. Now this is a legal minefield but in essence it boils down to the fact that the copyright on a work remains with the author, or his successors, until 70 years after his death. But it is not that simple for if the work was first published outside the UK then complications begin to present themselves.

Assuming you want to proceed the first questions to be asked are: when did the writer die? Where was the book first published and what copyright laws apply to it. You might have to consult a copyright lawyer just to be on the safe side.

Let’s assume the book is out of copyright and available to publish, consider this. Have you the moral right to rework someone else’s work and claim it as your own? To do so could be regarded as plagiarism and that will do your reputation no good at all. Remember this simply reworking a book and using different words, or taking, one might even say stealing, the original authors idea is still plagiarism.

Yet plagiarism is not a criminal offence at worse it is a civil offence and one where you might find yourself up before the civil court in a copyright case, so assuming the book is out of copyright then yes you are technically free to publish it.

Most authors presented with a similar set of circumstances will try to get inspiration from the original work, give it their own twist, so to speak. Most authors will also acknowledge the original author somewhere within the book. Do that and you will be able to hold your head higher. The danger with simply submitting to a publisher is that someone on their staff may see what you are at and that could effectively ruin any hope you have of making a living through writing. Thread carefully.