A lesson to learn about the internet is that "entrepreneurs" are persistent and very annoying marketers. They’ll use any means to get you to open your wallet.
It's so easy to get sucked into a marketing scam, and reselling ebooks for profit is no exception. For example, you'll find volumes of websites offering resell rights or private label rights (PLR) for ebooks that you can supposedly sell on your website for profit.
To help you find a legitimate path to reselling ebooks, we cover the best sources and methods—not all completely free. Get your online ebook business off to a decent start.
Why You Should Be Careful When Reselling Ebooks
Even if your intentions are good and legitimate, many factors can trip you up, especially if you take the internet too lightly. You may be familiar with online pyramid schemes, for example.
It can start with a convincing email from a friend, suggesting a deal where you send a dollar to the five names on the list, replace one name with your own, and then forward the email to a number of your own friends.
Today, it doesn't take very long for mainframe admins to suspend your email account and issue you a stern warning, if not punishment, against using any systems for pyramid schemes. Cybersecurity measures are tighter and stricter than ever.
Even if you don't know what a pyramid scheme is and do it unconsciously, you can get in trouble. It's the same with reselling ebooks. If you don't understand the rules and scams going around, you're likely to make mistakes you can't come back from.
The Right Way to Resell Ebooks for Free Online
How do you tell the difference between a legitimate ebook business and an online marketing scheme? All get-rich-quick schemes have two things in common:
- They involve little to no effort on your part in order to get filthy rich.
- They don't work.
The primary reason that these particular scams don't work is that when you purchase a book with resell rights, you don't own exclusive rights.
In other words, a hundred other people could also own resell rights to that same ebook, and they're all trying to sell the exact same book on the internet.
With that said, there are legitimate ways to make some decent money when you resell ebooks for free online, but it comes down to the source of your "free" ebooks.
1. Offer To Publish and Promote
If you can come up with unique ebooks that are in hot demand, you'll do very well in terms of ebook sales. The only way you can do this successfully is by becoming a publisher and maintaining exclusive rights to the writing so that only you and no one else owns it.
It also helps if the ebooks are well written and cover popular topics. One way you can do this for free is by becoming an online publishing house and ebook store and attracting up-and-coming writers who just want to get published.
There are a few examples of sites that offer writers the opportunity to get published online if their writing is accepted.
For example, Alphabet Box welcomes writers of original short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and essays. It publishes authors' works and gets their name out there for the world to see.
Most such websites accept free writing from authors that they then publish in a magazine, e-zine, or other medium, which they then sell for profit or just publicity.
Policies can vary, however. For instance, some sites demand exclusive rights to published submissions, while others return the rights to the author after a while.
Some sites might even ask that the author acknowledge them as the first place of publication whenever they release their work elsewhere.
Keep in mind that while many writers get nothing more than a copy of the magazine, if that, others do receive a small payment for publication. Nevertheless, the former is accepted because the goal of most writers is just to get their work distributed and their name in front of readers.
If you do become an online publisher, you'll need clear but friendly policies, as well as a contract for the author to sign. It should lay out the fact that you will publish their ebooks for sale in an online bookstore.
2. Offer to Pay Royalties or an Up-Front Payment
Another approach—one that authors find more equitable, but won't be completely free for you—is to offer the writer either an up-front payment or royalties per sale for the ebook that they produce for you. This is not only fair, but it'll attract a greater number of high-quality writers.
VQR's submission guidelines list a range of ways authors can earn money from the magazine's online and printed versions. Whether they write poetry or investigative articles, they can get $100 to $1000 or more per submission.
The cool thing about building your business this way is that you aren't doing any of the work to create the content yourself—you're simply serving as the middle-man to sell the ebooks for the author and taking a cut in the process.
You don't have to focus on fiction, either. You can publish about anything you like—just make sure it's a popular genre, or you may not make a profit.
Take inspiration from companies like Page One Publishing, which accepts submissions from experienced freelance writers for its many business and lifestyle magazines.
You could also use freelance writing forums and boards across the web to post requests for ebook writers on topics that you want. You'll have plenty of talent knocking on your door and ready to produce your ebook for you.
Then, you can go for a simple one-time payment for exclusive rights—meaning only you own and can sell the ebook. You can resell it as many times as you like and earn quite a bundle.
3. Rewriting PLR Ebooks
The last approach is a good alternative for the person who doesn't have authors or want to write an entire ebook from scratch. There are loads of sites out there that sell Private Label Rights ebooks, with basically two options.
You can either buy them for cheap or free from platforms like The PLR Store or you can pay a membership where you get free access to thousands of titles and additional perks. IDplr offers the latter, as well as free options.
It's best to not pay a monthly membership unless you plan to offer a high volume of ebooks for sale. Either way, you're going to need an easy way to modify the ebook to make it unique. Otherwise, you're selling the same exact book as everyone else.
To do this, you can either hire a writer or you can do it yourself using software. The internet is full of article spinners you could try for small ebooks, but one of the best applications out there that's customized specifically for this purpose is Calibre. The software is a free and multifunctional ebook management platform.
The reason Calibre is the best option is that most article spinner applications out there that promise to automatically rewrite text just turn an excellent article into garbage.
Writing an algorithm that can replace the mind of a good writer is just about impossible, so Calibre offers the next best thing: tools to edit the ebook yourself.
After adding an ebook to your Calibre library, you can convert it into different formats—from PDF to EPUB, for example—and change several parts of the document.
You can rewrite the text, whether manually or via the word replacement tool. If you have CSS developer tricks up your sleeve, feel free to apply them to your ebook.
The images, font, hyperlinks, punctuation, and more are at your disposal, as well as smart tools like the ability to fix your HTML or spell check the document.
There is a learning curve to this software, but once you get to know its capabilities, you won't need any other ebook management platform. You can do everything from finding books and news reports to organizing your Kindle library on Calibre.
By combining both the human touch and the software approach, you'll end up with a unique ebook that you purchased dirt cheap, but which you can sell at a markup for huge profits, over and over for as long as you like.
Work Out How to Sell Your Ebooks Online
In addition to acquiring and designing digital books, your business will have to jump through pricing, marketing, and distribution hoops. So, whether you're selling an author's original work or an edited PLR ebook, you need a strong e-commerce strategy.
Start by learning all you can about the book industry. It'll be easier to navigate it and make a profit without mistakes or legal problems.