About Us
My name is Casper du Toit. I am a brand strategist, author, and entrepreneur currently living in Johannesburg, South Africa. I am also an avid reader who developed a love for books at an early age.
I have always been interested in self-help books to discover how I could be the best version of myself and learn life lessons from others. However, I wasn’t only passionate about improving my own life but also about helping other people improve theirs.
I don’t remember when I first discovered the public domain. However, I was astonished at the massive number of high-quality, copyright-free self-improvement books in the public domain.
It was as if I had stumbled upon a goldmine, and I was surprised that so few people were even aware of this great resource!
The challenge is that most of these books are extremely hard to find in an editable Word Document format. The alternative is to research, validate, and acquire suitable books, and have them scanned. However, it is a lengthy and often expensive process!
Most public domain books sold online have been edited or modified to some extent and are therefore copyright-protected and not fit to be used for commercial purposes. The same applies to most newly-released publications of public domain books. The only way to ensure the original content is still intact is to acquire the original book.
I saw an opportunity to profit from the public domain while helping others to do the same, without spending countless hours and a lot of money trying to find good public domain books.
My goal was to offer scanned, copyright-free public domain books in an editable Word Document format as an instant download for a nominal fee. Books that they could benefit from personally, and also sell as is or after editing them to potentially thousands of other people.
Out of these objectives, ZeroLimits.org was born in 2016.
My vision for this site is for it to be the No. 1 site on the Internet for monetizing high-quality self-help books in the public domain.
ZeroLimits.org is a proud supporter of OneTreePlanted.org, a non-profit organization focused on global reforestation. For every order placed, a tree is planted.
The most common question I receive is: “Is it ethical to profit from someone else’s work?”
The only time I would consider it unethical to profit from a public domain book is if I were to pretend to be the author. That is without changing the content.
Consider this. How many companies have profited from the invention of the lightbulb? Would we be better off today if Thomas Edison had taken the original patent to the grave with him or when it expired? Innovation as we know it today would not exist without pioneers like Tomas Edison.
The same principle applies to public domain books. Hundreds of thousands of books would be out of print and forgotten if it were not for the public domain. Instead, they continue to enrich the lives of millions in one form or another.
Most life coaches use at least some content derived from the public domain in their coaching sessions or published content. Many of Disney’s most popular stories and characters are based on, inspired by, or derived from works that have entered the public domain. And, in the age of AI, large language models like ChatGPT have been trained on public domain works.
Millions have benefited and profited from public domain books, and so can you.
Wishing you all of the very best, always.
Casper du Toit
