What you can legally use in a self-published book comes down to three things: material you created yourself, material that is in the public domain, and material you have a licence or written permission to use. Almost everything else, including images you found online and song lyrics, needs permission first.
A quick note before we start: this article explains how copyright generally works for self-published authors, but it is not legal advice. Copyright depends on the exact facts of your situation and the country you publish in. For a specific reuse question, especially anything high-value or high-risk, check with a copyright lawyer.
Can You Use Images You Find Online?
No, not unless you have checked the licence first. The most common and most expensive mistake self-published authors make is assuming that an image found through a Google search, saved from Pinterest, or copied off another website is free to use. It almost never is.
Every photograph, drawing, and graphic is protected by copyright from the moment it is created, whether or not it carries a copyright symbol. The U.S. Copyright Office is clear that protection is automatic and does not depend on registration. Google is a search engine: it points you to images that live on other people’s websites, but it does not own them and cannot give you permission to use them. Putting one of those images in a book you sell is commercial use, and that is exactly the kind of use the owner can act on.
If you are not sure where an image came from, you can often trace it: a reverse image search (drag the picture into Google Images or TinEye) usually finds the original source and owner. A visible watermark is a clear “hands off” sign; removing it does not make the image yours, it just makes the copying look deliberate.
The images you can use fall into a few clear groups: photos and artwork you made yourself; images you have bought a licence for from a stock library; and images released under an open licence that allows commercial use. When you buy stock, read which licence you are getting: a royalty-free licence lets you pay once and use the image in many ways; a rights-managed licence is tied to one specific use; and an editorial licence is for news contexts only and cannot be used in a book you are selling.
When a cover file reaches us and the author cannot say where the main image came from, that is the moment to stop and check. A striking photo lifted from a search result is exactly the kind of thing a stock agency’s detection tools can flag months after a book has gone on sale, long after it would be cheap to fix.
Can You Quote Song Lyrics or Poems?
Almost never without permission. The belief that a line or two of a song is “too short to matter” is the second great myth of self-publishing, and it is the one most likely to end in a bill. Short does not mean safe.
The reason is something courts call the “heart of the work.” A song’s value is often packed into a handful of words: the chorus, the hook, the line everyone remembers. Quote those, and you may have copied the most protected part of the whole song even though you only used a few words. Poems work the same way: four lines of a twelve-line poem is a third of the whole, a large proportion by any measure. Music publishers are also among the most active enforcers of copyright anywhere.
The cost of getting this wrong is not theoretical. In the United States, statutory damages for copyright infringement run from $750 to $30,000 per work, and up to $150,000 per work where the infringement is found to be willful, as set out in Section 504 of the U.S. Copyright Act. Each song is a separate work, so quoting three songs is three separate risks.
To use lyrics legally, you need a print licence (sometimes called a lyric or text licence) from whoever owns the words, usually the music publisher rather than the singer. Expect the process to take weeks and to cost a fee that can run from modest to steep. One narrow exception: songs and poems published in 1930 or earlier are now in the public domain in the United States, so those words are free to use; the same work may still be protected in other countries, so check for your market.
You can always name a song without permission, because titles are not protected by copyright. What you cannot do is reproduce the lyrics themselves. Epigraph lyrics at the top of a chapter are one of the things we flag most often when a manuscript comes in for formatting; authors are frequently surprised that the four lines they have built a whole scene around are the part they cannot keep.
How Much Can You Quote Under Fair Use?
There is no magic number. No word count, percentage, or “four bars of music” rule makes a quotation automatically safe. Anyone who tells you that 10 percent, or 300 words, or eight bars is a guaranteed green light is repeating a myth.
In the United States, “fair use” lets you quote limited amounts of someone else’s work for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, and scholarship. But whether a particular use qualifies is decided case by case, weighing four factors. The U.S. Copyright Office sets them out as:
- The purpose of the use: commentary, criticism, or teaching weighs in your favour; using the material simply to decorate or fill out a book for sale weighs against you.
- The nature of the original: quoting from factual writing is safer than quoting from something highly creative, such as a poem or a novel.
- The amount you use: both how much you take and how important that part is. Taking the single most memorable passage counts against you even if it is short.
- The effect on the market: if your use could replace a sale or a licence the owner would otherwise have made, that weighs heavily against fair use.
The “300 words from a book, 250 words from a poem” figures you may have seen are publishers’ house guidelines, not law. A common assumption runs along the lines of “I only used 10 percent, so I’m fine”; that percentage appears nowhere in the law, and the safer instinct is to ask whether you took the part that made the original worth reading.
Outside the United States the rules are usually narrower. The United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and Canada use “fair dealing,” which only applies to specific listed purposes such as criticism, review, quotation, and news reporting. Because ebookpbook works with authors in more than 30 countries, the safe habit is the same everywhere: quote sparingly, quote for a reason, and credit the source.
What Do Creative Commons Licences Allow?
Creative Commons licences let a creator pre-approve certain uses of their work, which can be a great source of images and text. But the permissions vary a lot, and one common type bans exactly what most authors are doing: selling.
A Creative Commons licence is built from a few simple building blocks that appear together as a short code on the work. “BY” means you must credit the creator. “SA” (ShareAlike) means anything you build from it must carry the same licence. “NC” (NonCommercial) means you may not use it for commercial purposes. “ND” (NoDerivatives) means you may not change it. In practice you will see these combined into a label such as CC BY (just credit the creator), CC BY-SA (credit, and release any adaptation under the same licence), or CC BY-NC (credit, non-commercial use only). A separate tool, CC0, is the creator giving the work away into the public domain, with no conditions at all.
Two of these parts trip authors up. NonCommercial is the big one: a book you offer for sale is a commercial use, full stop, so NC-licensed material is off-limits unless you go back and get separate permission. ShareAlike is the quieter trap: if you adapt SA-licensed content into your own work, you may be required to release your work under the same open licence, which is rarely what an author selling a book wants.
When you do use Creative Commons material, credit it properly: title, author, source link, and licence name, in the caption or on the copyright page. The mix-up we see most often is an author who found a perfect illustration on a site like Wikimedia Commons, saw the word “free,” and missed that the licence was NonCommercial. For a book you intend to sell, that licence is a closed door; look for CC0 or CC BY material instead.
Can You Use Real Brand Names in Fiction?
Usually, yes. A character can drink a Coke, drive a Toyota, or scroll on an iPhone. Using a real brand name to refer to the real product is generally fine under a principle called nominative fair use, and it is a different area of law from everything above.
Brand names are protected by trademark, not copyright. Trademark exists to stop customers being confused about who makes a product, so the test is about confusion and endorsement, not about creative copying. The International Trademark Association describes nominative fair use as using a brand name only as far as needed to identify the real thing, without suggesting the brand sponsors or approves your work.
Where authors get into trouble is crossing from “mentioning” into “implying.” Putting a brand in your title, designing a cover that mimics its packaging, or showing a real company in a false or sordid light can all invite a complaint. A passing mention in the text is very different from building your marketing around someone else’s name.
On the copyright page, a single line noting that trademarks are the property of their respective owners is cheap insurance and takes one sentence. It does not give you new rights, but it signals good faith and costs nothing.
Quick Reference: What You Can Legally Use
Here is the short version. You can generally use these without tracking anyone down:
- Anything you wrote, drew, or photographed yourself.
- Public domain works. In most countries copyright lasts for the author’s life plus 70 years; in the United States, works published in 1930 and earlier are public domain as of 2026. Status differs by country, so confirm it for the market you are selling in.
- Material under a licence that clearly allows commercial use: CC0, CC BY, or stock images you have bought the right licence for.
- Short quotations that genuinely fall under fair use or fair dealing, used for comment, criticism, or context and properly credited.
And here is what to stop and check before you use it:
- Images found anywhere online without a clear licence.
- Song lyrics and poems, even a single line.
- Long quotations, or short ones that take the most distinctive part of a work.
- Anything where you cannot work out who owns it (these are called orphan works, and “I couldn’t find the owner” is not a defence).
A few related questions come up often. Turning a public domain book into something new of your own is separate from simply checking whether a work is free to use; we cover it in rewriting a public domain book. If you suspect someone has copied your book, that is a different process, set out in how to tell if your book is being pirated. And because the cover image is the one most likely to cause trouble, our guide to writing a cover design brief covers what to hand your designer.
None of this is a reason to be afraid of publishing. Almost every author can build a clean, sellable book from their own words, properly licensed images, and the occasional well-judged quotation. The trouble starts only when “I found it online” or “it’s only a few words” stands in for checking. When a reuse question feels high-stakes, ask a copyright lawyer rather than guess.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use song lyrics in my book if I credit the songwriter?
No. Crediting the songwriter is not the same as getting permission. You still need a print licence from whoever owns the lyrics, usually the music publisher. Crediting without permission is still infringement; it just makes you easier to identify.
Are images from Google or Pinterest free to use in my book?
No. Google and Pinterest are search and sharing platforms, not image owners, and almost every image you find through them is copyrighted. Use your own photos, stock images you have licensed, or images released under a commercial-friendly Creative Commons or public domain licence.
How many words can I quote from another book without permission?
There is no fixed number. United States fair use weighs four factors case by case, and fair dealing rules elsewhere are narrower still. A short quote used for review or commentary is often fine, but quoting the single most distinctive passage, even briefly, may not be.
Can I mention real brands like Coca-Cola or iPhone in my novel?
Usually yes. Referring to a real product by its real name is generally allowed under nominative fair use, as long as you do not imply the brand endorses your book or use the name in your title. Avoid showing a brand in a false or damaging light.
What does Creative Commons NonCommercial mean for a book I am selling?
It means you cannot use that material. A book offered for sale is a commercial use, so NonCommercial (NC) licensed content is off-limits unless you get separate permission from the creator. Look for CC0 or CC BY material instead.
