Tracing fonts and KDP: what you can sell
If you make a tracing book with a dotted font, that font is software with its own licence, and a book you sell on Amazon is commercial use. So read the licence before the font goes into a KDP interior. If it says “personal use” or “non-commercial”, it doesn't cover a book you sell.
Trace Press doesn't use a tracing font for print letters
A font only gives the outline of a letter. A child tracing it needs the path the pencil takes: where it starts, which way it goes, when it lifts. So Trace Press draws every print letter and digit as a list of pencil strokes, written in its own code. The model letter, the dotted trace, the numbered start dots and the arrows all come from those strokes. There's no dotted font inside the book to license.
The fonts it does embed
Two, both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1:
- Liberation Sans, for headings, page text and the cover.
- Playwrite US Trad, a traditional American cursive, for cursive books.
The licence lets the fonts be “bundled, embedded, redistributed and/or sold with any software”. The one thing it forbids is selling the font by itself. On books made with an OFL font, the licence’s FAQ (item 1.13) says:
“Referencing or embedding an OFL font in any document does not change the license of the document itself. The requirement for fonts to remain under the OFL does not apply to any document created using the fonts and their derivatives.”
The first quote is from the licence file shipped with each font; the second is from the OFL FAQ. This page is not legal advice.
What the $19 is for
Free books carry a small footer line on each page and PREVIEW on the cover. Paying $19 once removes both, on every book and cover you make from then on, so you can sell them. The free sample book shows the whole book as the free version makes it.
Make a tracing bookAlso for sellers: tracing book cover size for every trim and page count, and how to make a tracing book for KDP, with print cost and royalty.