Hi,
I am working in the field of education and had an idea for a social project. In India the education system suffers due to the lack of trained teachers. One of the challenges has been quality of teacher training material and access to latest research. Most teachers do not also have the time to read books to learn new things. My idea is to read and rewrite educational books for teachers. If a original book is of 300 - 400 pages. The new re-written article would be 25 - 30 pages. I would not contain any quotations or plagiarism from the original book. All the content would be newly written, but what would be retained is the essence, concepts and ideas. What would also be retained is the chapter flow of the original book. A book introduces ideas in a certain logical flow to build an entire story. This would be retained for understanding.
What I want to know is does this project amount to copyright infringement? Will I get into trouble from book publishers? According to my understanding as a post graduate student who has done research work and also as someone working in elearning, I know that copying ideas and idea flow from another source amounts to plagiarism. However, this is valid for research and to claim that some work is original and mine own.
I am not claiming these condensed books are my own. In fact these books will not be available for retail sale. They will only be made available directly to school teachers. A very nominal fee will be charged to the schools to run the service. I am positioning this as a research service, rather than a product.
I am an avid reader and have realised that there is very little original writing being done. I know my service will be of value to the education system and can help teachers. But I do not want to get into trouble nor do I want to resort to tactics that other authors follow, of copying key ideas from others and then adding 80% nonsense. Juggling the structure and coming up with another book claiming to be different.
I do not want to claim to be different, just want to claim to be effective.
Can someone help
Thanks
Kapil Aggarwal
