Books on (digital) tape and another idea

Hi all, I am searching for that something that I want to do for the next half of my life as I retire from the military next March. The closest thing that I guess I can call a passion is airplanes and aviation but especially military. I was thinking that a good homebased business to start would be to narrate/ read old aviation books and make them available for download or cd purchase through the snailmail. Has anyone got personal experience doing something like this? I really need to get information or recommendations from the aspect of the type of computer hardware and software to use to do the recording etc.

Another idea I had was to produce aviation greeting cards with a blank inside so that the sender could personalize it to the recipient. Anyone with experience of these?

I am really stretching here to figure out the "what's next" so I would appreciate your feedback.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Smith, ND on November 16, 2012 at 5:43pm

It's absolutely do-able, if the old books are old enough. Pre-1923 should be public domain.

Otherwise, you'll have to verify whether a copyright is in place before you can "read" them.

Some of the rest of the folks can recommend software to record the podcast, CD, or downloadable audio files.

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Permalink Reply by Monty Powers on November 16, 2012 at 8:16pm

Thanks for the reply Lee. Several of the books were printed in the late 1960's by Doubleday & Company which I believe was sold or went out of business not long after that. Any ideas on what to do in that case?

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Permalink Reply by Lee Smith, ND on November 16, 2012 at 8:25pm

They're most likely still under copyright protection. Even if they're out of print they are probably not something you can use without permission. Cornell has some details and a downloadable pdf at:

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm