Can You Use Canva for Publishing on Amazon KDP? | Canva's Licensing & Copyrights Explained

[Music] hi everyone welcome back to my channel so over the last few weeks I have received a lot of questions and comments ever since I posted my videos on how to create a coloring book using canva and how to create a children's story book using canva and I've received a lot of questions as to whether or not we're allowed to use canva for KDP purposes and if so what are some of the restrictions that we need to bear in mind so in today's video I'm going to share with you my interpretation of what we can and cannot do using canva that is based on my research and reading through all of their licensing terms as well as some of their help pages and contacting Amazon KDP directly and the answer is not as simple yes or no so please make sure you stay throughout the video because there are a lot of nuances regarding this that you need to be aware of and before we get started I want to remind you that I am not a copyright lawyer so all of this information is based on my research as well as my personal interpretation and experiences and I hope that you'll find this video helpful and if so please don't forget to give me a big Thumbs Up And subscribe to my channel for more and let's get started before I get into the details of what you can and cannot do using canva I want to First quickly explain to you the difference between free versus Pro canva content free content are the canva elements without the little crown symbol next to it and pro content are the canva elements you see with the little crown crown symbol next to it so let's start off by talking about our Pro content elements first from a licensing perspective if you are a pro account user with canva meaning you pay for a monthly subscription with them then each time you add a pro content element into your design you will automatically be granted a pro content license at no extra cost so for example if you add five Pro content elements into your design you will automatically be granted five separate Pro content licenses but if you are not a pro account user meaning you are using the free version of canva then each Pro content element you add to your design will be watermarked and the only way to remove the watermark is by purchasing a oneoff Content license from canva which you can use only in a single design what this means is if you intend to use this piece of pro content element across multiple designs then you will actually need to purchase a separate license for each time that element is being used you cannot use the same Pro content element three times across three different designs and only purchase one license for it on the other hand for free content elements regardless of whether you are a pro account user or a free account user you will automatically be granted a license to use the free content element across multiple designs without any extra cost now that we understand the logistics of how canvas licensing Works let's dive into canvas content license agreement to see what we can and cannot do in section five of the content license agreement it lists out the permitted uses of all content on canva which would be inclusive of both free and pro content elements as you can see there are many permissible uses but what I want to highlight to you is number six and seven which would be the most applicable to us from a KDP perspective so you can see on number six it specifically says that we could use canva for books and book covers and in number seven we are also allowed to use it for things like ebooks scrolling down further you will see a section 5A which proceeds to describe a few limits on how Pro content can be used specifically as it relates to online SL digital Publications if you're only planning to publish a physical copy of your book I.E a paperback or a hard cover then this section would not be applicable to you however if you're planning on publishing an ebook then you will have to comply with this section this section basically says that you're allowed to use Pro content for your online or digital Publications such as a web page blog or ebook as long as none of the pro elements used in your design exceeds 480,000 total pixels for example 600x 800 pixels the intention of this limitation is essentially to prevent other people from downloading the pro content elements from your online digital Publications and then using it elsewhere outside of canva without proper licensing aside from the formal content license agreement canva also has another page which explains their licensing requirements and restrictions in a more simplistic and illustrative manner so let's take a look at some of these details scrolling down to the the what's allowed section you will see that the designs you create in canva can be used for both personal and Commercial purposes and the second bullet point essentially reconfirms that you can sell merchandise with your canva design on it number three that says Don't resell redistribute or take credit for Content provided through canva basically means you should never take a standalone content element from canva and resell it on a different platform for example you should always just leverage canva elements and incorporate it into your overall design which should be a creative unique design of yours and then you would be allowed to use it for commercial purposes and print it on your merchandise scrolling down further on the section relating to using content in your designs it says by using content in a design you're creating something unique once you do there are lots of things you can do with your Creations however Standalone content I.E a photo used on its own without any other Design Elements has restrictions for example it can't be printed on products or merchandise for sale so what this means is as you can see in the example here they're showing you that let's say this picture is one canva Element you cannot just take that one photo and slap it on a mug and call it a day same thing you wouldn't just take one element and slap it on your book cover or your page and call it a day in order to use canva elements in accordance with their licensing agreement you must add your own creativity and layer multiple different elements text or fonts or backgrounds to create a truly unique design of yours and once you do that you are allowed to use it for commercial purposes and you can put it on your book cover you can put it in your books or you can even put it on a mug and sell that so in the context of our coloring book and story book here are some examples of what you can and cannot do and then coming back here the third paragraph is what we already discussed previously regarding maximum pixels for pro content used in digital or online Publications such as ebooks and this whole cont content here is further reiterated in their FAQ section further below which says can I sell products or merchandise with my design on it the answer is yes all of our photos fonts and Graphics can be used to create designs for printing on products for sale such as t-shirts mugs books and other merchandise as long as you comply with our license please note that you cannot sell sand alone prints of Cana content such as a print out of a stock photo without any other design elements on say a t-shirt So based on all that we have read so far it is telling us that as long as we do not use any canva elements on a standalone basis but instead layer multiple canva elements fonts and backgrounds to create an overall unique design then we are allowed to use those designs for commercial purposes such as putting it on a book to sell on Amazon KDP but we are not done yet there are a few other things we still need to clarify firstly there are some restrictions when it comes to using canva templates which is further explained in canvas licensing video here if your template design includes Pro content you must make sure the template is kept in canva that is the template is a canva template sharing that directs users back to canva not as a separate downloadable digital file the reason why I want to highlight this part is because there is often some misconception that this means we cannot use Pro content for publishing books on KDP or any other platform outside of canva however this is far from the truth because there is actually a difference between a book and a template according to canvas's help page titled using canva to design digital and physical products for sale here a template is defined as a design that has a predetermined layout and style which is intended to be further edited or customized by an end user to produce the required final document a good example would be a wedding invitation where you will need to fill out the details of the event in order to use it it then goes to specifically say that an ebook is not a template because it is a finished product that does not require further editing by the end user in order to use it so this part basically explains very clearly that the restrictions relating to the use of canva templates do not apply to our situation here for book publishing for KDP which is good news the second item I wanted to touch on because I have seen a lot of questions about it is whether we need to attribute canva and their designer in our books for using their graphic elements based on this section in canvas licensing explanation page right here there is no requirement to do that although you can do so if you choose to up until now everything we looked at looks like we are in De clear to use canva elements for KDP publishing however I'm now going to talk through one specific item on canvas's requirements that is a bit more controversial this is outlined not on their actual content license agreement but on their help page titled copyright ownership of designs made in canva so in this section that says who owns a copyright in a design made in canva it says this depends on its composition generally speaking if you're the creator of an original design you're also its copyright holder but if you use thirdparty content I.E stock content from the canva library in your design then your ownership is subject to those thirdparty rights it then proceeds to say canva gives you non-exclusive licenses to use stock content in your designs including photos Graphics videos fonts and music for a range of permitted uses this includes the ability to sell certain types of designs that contain content and so this basically says that if you have used canva elements to create a unique design of your own then that overall unique design you would have in a sense the copyright to it but the underlying content or the elements that you use you wouldn't have exclusive rights to those because those technically belong to the artists who originally created those for canvas so you have the non-exclusive right to use those elements to create your overall design and then your overall design is generally speaking you have the copyright for that but it is a bit more complicated as you scroll down further the print on demand service I'm using to print my t-shirt and I guess in our case would be books requires me to confirm that I am the copyright owner of my design can I do that so on this help page it actually says some thirdparty print services may require you to agree that that you own copyright in any design you upload to their service if that's the case you can't use canva content in those designs because you don't own the copyright in that content you only have a license to use it so if the print service only requires you to agree that you have the right to use your design that contains canva content then the print service is okay to use as long as you're complying with our licensed terms I.E you aren't trying to sell content on a standalone basis you're responsible for checking the terms of thirdparty websites as canva is not able to advise you on these and this is potentially a problem for us because as some of you may already know as part of the KDP book upload process there's a part that asks us to confirm our publishing rights which says I own the copyright and hold the necessary publishing rights based on that you may decide that you're no longer comfortable to use canva elements for KDP anymore and that is completely reasonable as well however before you decide on what you feel comfortable doing I would like to share a few additional thoughts for your consideration I have heard many people say that given they are no longer comfortable using canva elements that they will instead choose to use graphic elements from other platforms such as pixabay or creative Fabrica however I think what we need to realize is that this is actually no different from using canva elements because you would not own the copyrights to those graphic elements either and would only have a license to use them even if you hire an illustrator to draw your illustrations for you A lot of times the artist will retain the copyright and you are only given the rights to use their artwork in your book so realistically unless you're drawing your own illustrations which obviously would be amazing you really would not own the copyrights to the artwork regardless of what platform you download your graphic elements from secondly I believe the real reason why canva had put this specific restriction there is also because technically none of us would have excl exclusive rights to the use of any of their graphic elements so in the situation where I use this bear for my story and someone else happens to use the same bear for their story I won't be able to say to KDP that the other person is infringing on my copyrights because neither of us have exclusive rights to use that bear now if that person copies your entire book completely and not just use the same bear graphic element then that would be a different story and you would have a much stronger grounds to say to KDP that your copyrights have been infringed so I would say if you okay with would potentially having someone else use the same graphic elements for their book which will likely have a completely different style and plot anyway then I think the risk of using canva graphic elements is relatively low I also think that by putting that restriction there canva is also just covering their bases so that they would not be liable in the unlikely situation where someone gets suspended from their KDP account because they have claimed to own the copyright to their book which contains canva elements to confirm what Amazon KDP stance is on this I have actually communicated directly with them to confirm whether we can check out the I own the copyright checkbox If part of our design includes graphic elements for which we have purchased online and have a license to use for commercial purposes to be safe I have confirmed it with two different agents on two separate days just to make sure I receive a consistent response so I asked them I just have a general question I wanted to reconfirm as part of the book publishing process on KDP there is a check boox that says I own the copyright and I hold necessary publishing rights if I am publishing a book for which I have leveraged graphic elements purchased online say from canva or creative Fabrica which also comes with the appropriate licensing required for commercial use these graphic elements are then used creatively together to create a unique design for my book cover or book illustrations I.E no graphic element is used on a standalone basis would I be able to click on the check box that says I own the copyrights and I hold necessary publishing rights and let's see what their answer is so they confir back saying if you have purchased the images and hold the necessary licensing then yes and then they of course caveat that if there are any issues identified during the review our review team will reach out to you for additional information and supporting documents which is baau for them because as you may remember there's a 48 Hours review process before your book gets published on Amazon KDP based on these responses it does not appear that they have any concerns with this which is great news I personally also have books published on KDP which have been created leveraging both free and pro canva elements and to date thankfully have not run into any problems at all however at the end of the day this will be a personal decision that you will need to make for yourself but I hope I have laid out the facts and considerations clearly enough so that you can make an informed decision I personally really love canva and will definitely continue to use canva but if after hearing all facts you feel like you might want to take a little break from canva and try something different for a while then there's always the option of using some other applications such as book bolbs which I've actually linked a 20% discount coupon in the video description below but overall I hope you enjoyed this video and if you found this video to be helpful to you please don't forget to give me a big Thumbs Up And subscribe to my channel for more and I'll see you next time

Channel: Ivy Hang

Views: 38,223

Keywords: amazonkdp, amazon kdp, canva license, canva licensing terms, canva pro content license, canva free content license, kdppublishing, canva copyrights, kdp copyrights

Id: MFc0e7e-CRI

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024