What rights are needed to sell books on your website?
I have a website and I want to sell some books from different authors. Can anyone suggest who I should contact to get the legal rights to sell the books? I am selling them to other countries as well, so the prices would be different. I just want everything to be legal.
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IANAL, but when it comes to rights, it is generally the the right to make copies that is protected. If you own an existing copy of a book you can sell it just like you can sell a chair or a piano.
However, the Supap Kirtsaeng case makes things a little more interesting. Publishers often sell books much more cheaply overseas than in the US or other first world countries. Supap Kirtsaeng was a Thai student who started a site that bought textbooks at local prices and sold them to US students over the web, greatly undercutting the publisher's US prices. The publishers sued, claiming that copyright law gave the the right to set prices in different markets. According to this Ars Technica story, its appears that the supreme court disagrees: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/thai-student-protected-by-first-sale-supreme-court-rules/ Obviously, though, it is a case you should educate yourself on before you proceed.
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