There are plenty of reasons to look forward to January 1. Not only is it New Year’s Day, it’s also Public Domain Day. This is that oh so glorious day when U.S. copyrights expire and creative works become free for everyone to use. Just like that, a shot of imagination is injected into the world.

A Time to Create

Talk about a reason to celebrate!

Before 1998, U.S. copyrights lasted 50 years beyond the life of the creator. Laws then changed, extending the length of copyrights to 70 years after the creator’s passing. At least that was the case for works made after 1977. Copyrights for works made from 1923 to 1977 were set to last 95 years from the time they were created.

The change in law slowed down how many works entered the public domain over the next two decades. Not until 2019 did works from 1923 become fodder for our active imaginations once again. In 2021, we got F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In 2022, we gawked over A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. From 2023 to 2025, we have some big prizes headed our way!

Books Entering the Public Domain

2023 (Books Published in 1927)	2024 (Books published in 1928)	2025 (Books Published in 1929)
Agatha Christie The Big Four	Agatha Christie The Mystery of the Blue Train	Elizabeth Bowen The Last September
Arthur Conan Doyle The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes	W. E. B. Du Bois Dark Princess	Agatha Christie Partners in Crime (short stories)
William Faulkner Mosquitoes	Esther Forbes A Mirror for Witches	Agatha Christie The Seven Dials Mystery
Ernest Hemingway Men Without Women	Aldous Huxley Point Counter Point	Arthur Conan Doyle The Maracot Deep
Franz Kafka Amerika	Nella Larsen Quicksand	William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury
Sinclair Lewis Elmer Gantry	D. H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover	Ernest Hemingway  A Farewell to Arms
Upton Sinclair Oil!	H. G. Wells Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island	Sinclair Lewis  Dodsworth
Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf Orlando: A Biography	John Steinbeck Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, With Occasional Reference to History

What to Expect

With Lady Chatterley’s Lover in play, there may be a lot of “flirting” going on. Expect full-out romances too. After all, Hemingway wooed audiences with his wartime love affair in A Farewell to Arms.

Odds are you’ll see a lot of mysteries too. You have Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot on the case, not to mention Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. While some Poirot stories will be in the public domain, some will not. That means you could be infringing on copyrights if you incorporate storylines or events that happen to him in later books. So steer clear of The Orient Express, at least until 2030!

As for Sherlock Holmes, all his stories will be in the public domain. Unfortunately, that won’t necessarily make his iconic character fair game. The issue is no longer about copyrights but about trademarks. The Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. owns a trademark on Sherlock Holmes and tends to be a bit litigious. You might want to chat with an intellectual property lawyer before you invest a lot of time and energy on a big project.

Do any of these public domain books inspire you? What will you write next?