All Kobo vendors must adhere to our content guidelines when distributing eBooks using Kobo Writing Life. Kobo reserves the right to remove eBooks that contain the following:
- Pornographic, pedophilic, or obscene content. This includes: incest, bestiality, exploitation, sexual violence, or force.
- Child pornography
- Hateful content: users may not publish material that promotes hate toward groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity.
- Violent content: Users may not publish direct threats of violence against any person or group of people. Users may not publish instructional material regarding the creation of weapons.
During the creation process, we’ll ask you to confirm whether or not your content is of the public domain.
Putting your work in the public domain means that you’re relinquishing all copyrights to it, and it can be used by anyone, for any purpose, in any form, without the need to seek permission or offer recompense.
Copyright Guidelines
We require that users own the digital publishing rights to all content uploaded for sale to the Kobo Store. If you are using Kobo Writing Life as a self-published author, you most likely own the rights to your content. If you are also a traditionally published author, and you are unsure as to which rights you own, please consult your publisher or attorney. If you are using Kobo Writing Life as a publisher or aggregator, you must have legal consent from the content owners before you can distribute their titles. If you notice that another user is selling a book that you own the rights to, please contact us and we will investigate the issue immediately.
Geographic Rights
Users also have the opportunity to select geographic rights for each book they upload using Kobo Writing Life. If you are certain that you own all the rights necessary to sell your title worldwide, select yes for Worldwide Rights during step three of your eBook creation. When you select worldwide rights, your titles will be made available for sale in all of our established territories.
If you would like to view a list of our territories, select no for Worldwide rights and a list of available countries will appear.
If you would like to limit the territories in which your content can be sold, you can select specific countries from this list. Please ensure that you leave check marks only beside the territories where you are certain you hold digital rights for your content. For more information about how we monitor geographic rights, please view the Security Matters section.