You might have asked yourself the question “Can I legally sell ebooks?” before. The very short answer is that it depends. Here’s the short, but slightly less short, answer:
Selling your own work is legal. Using somebody else’s work to make money is usually illegal, and using AI is legal at the time of writing, but hotly debated.
I would not recommend using AI. Here’s why:
Is it legal to use AI?
Yes, using AI is currently legal, but there are many, many drawbacks. Here are some of them (we are using ChatGPT’s Ts and Cs for legal information):
1. You are legally responsible for the content. The content includes both your input and ChatGPT’s output, so anything ChatGPT writes that breaks the law is your fault.
2. However, anything that ChatGPT has already written for other users is not your content. You cannot assert intellectual property over it.
3. In Australia, at least for now, nobody (and no thing either) can assert copyright for content not written by a human. So “your” work is not copyrighted and anybody can use it.
4. According to the terms, you must defend and hold harmless OpenAI and ChatGPT from any losses, expenses or claims. Essentially, you can not sue them.
5. If a lot of people have a problem with ChatGPT, guess what? It’s still legally immune. Claims and disputes can only be given on an individual basis according to the terms and conditions.
6. Even if you want to sue OpenAI, you still probably couldn’t as they can only be held under California’s laws. They can also only be fought in Court specifically in the San Francisco courts.
7. You can post AI-generated content on your socials but you have to label it as generated by AI in a way that nobody could miss.
8. You can legally use ChatGPT to help write published material, but it must be attributed to you (so, you are responsible) and also labelled as AI-generated. No reader should reasonably be able to misunderstand or not see the label.
9. This one is not so much legal-related, but still important. ChatGPT just cannot create content as well as you can. Therefore, if you plan to use it in an ebook, you really should edit it. Heavily. Sometimes I use AI to help me brainstorm or to give me an outline, but I never just ask it for a book and publish that, as it just simply wouldn’t be a good product, and it would just fail.
What are the restrictions?
The restrictions on using other people’s work for making money are relatively complex. Here’s a simple breakdown:
1. Simply buying a person’s ebook off Amazon and selling it elsewhere is completely illegal. Don’t do it, your listing will get taken down and you will likely get banned for life, no matter where you put it up.
2. If you acquire master resale rights to an ebook, then you can legally sell it. However, they are usually very difficult to get as the author or business is essentially selling away the rights to the entire book.
3. Using parts of somebody’s work can be legal with permission and proper citing, but also depends on other factors.
4. Creating your own content to sell is completely legal. You can do whatever you wish with your own content, as you wrote it! The other advantage is that nobody else can steal your work, as you have the copyright over it. You can assert intellectual property and more to protect your content.
Can I resell ebooks?
Yes, you can resell ebooks in a similar process to reselling normal books.
You must get master resale rights to the manuscript, mentioned above, and if you have that then you can publish it to any platform you wish. If you do not have these rights, then just like any other form of writing, you cannot resell it. This is because you did not write it, and nor do you have any right to it. So it’s essentially just buying it off Amazon and selling it elsewhere!
What about outsourcing?
If you pay a person or business to write content for you, then they are most likely giving you master resale rights. Therefore outsourced content is completely legal to use. However, I would recommend checking through the content and editing it yourself to make it more helpful to readers. Here’s a guide on how to edit ebooks. If you want some help with your ebooks, you can explore my blog here.