How can I publish my book for FREE?
Posted Saturday, August 1, 2009 by admin
I wrote a study guide for a Sun java (programming) exam. I want to know is this book legal. Please feel kind to read this and provide an accurate answer for me.
Sun microsystems, the owner of the Java technology conducts several examinations in world wide as such as SCJP and SCWCD. There are many study guides are available for these examinations. But, there are no study guide currently available for the latest version of _____* exam. Because of this, it is very very hard to study for this exam. We have to read number of books, browse internet for so many web sites, to study for this examination. The exam content has a very large scale.
I wrote a study guide for this exam, by extracting contents from ebooks, web sites and some other several resources. I directly extracted some contents from more than 50 copywritten resources. However, I also added my own instructions too.
As those copywritten resources says, it is prohibit to extract their content and/or publish. However I did it, and maked my own study guide in pdf (ebook) format.
I know it is illegal. Because I think I violated copyright, but I don’t know. But, please feel kind to read the rest.
Now I have my study guide in pdf format. I can make a separate web site, only for this study guide, and allow anyone to download this pdf file for free. If I do it, my study guide will be the first and only study guide currently available for this ____* exam. I post this question before doing it!
I wrote this study guide to help others. I don’t wish to earn anything from it. My ambition with this ebook is to help other peoples those who are preparing for this exam. This is the only, only, and only purpose of writing this ebook.
Therefore I want to publish this ebook as I said above, even though it is an illegal task.
I added my name and country in this ebook. But I didn’t added my address or any other contact information. I mentioned in “preface”, that I extracted some content from other resources. Now my question is this. Under the above scenario, what will happen if I publish this book on a separate web site, as I mentioned above? My country is Sri Lanka, but I didn’t publish my contact info, so can they caught me for this in any way? What if I migrate to USA after 5 – 6 years later.
I also want to know, whether I’m doing a good job or bad job?
Please feel kind to provide accurate answers and comments.
* : In the above question, I didn’t mentioned the name of this exam, to be hidden from search engines.
If it’s illegal, don’t be surprised if you get caught.
If it’s not illegal, you can publish your own books on Blurb.com
Either way, you sound like you should double check just how legal/illegal this actually is.
If you publish copyrighted material, it is plagiarism.
You can give credit to the author, but normally it requires their consent as well.
As to publishing it for free…be careful of publishing scams.
Nahi,
Here is a site that explains a lot of what you’ve done. My take on this is that you’ve done nothing wrong as long as you let everyone know where you got the information and you didn’t copy verbatim every word you’ve read on the web page.
When we attend schools we read texts that are created to teach us the subjects we tend to study. Copying from a textbook is simply learning the facts about a certain course we’re taking. I wouldn’t worry about illegal right now, but find a literary agent in Writer’s Market for the current year and write a query letter to that agent explaining what you have.
Publishers have lawyers who can sift through your work and identify plagiarism and copyright infringement. You just need to let them know what web pages you acquired the information from. Let them judge for themselves what is legal and what isn’t . . . that is, if they decide to take you up on it and represent your work
Good luck!
PJ M