If you have eBooks on your website for sale, how do you ensure that the persons buying them doesn’t then sell them on?
This is the area of DRM (digital rights management) which is a tough one. Once someone has your standard ebook, there’s really nothing you can do to stop them sending it around. Even if you put a password on it, they can just pass that along. Or your could generate the ebook upon request and insert the buyer’s email address or other details into the ebook to make them less inclidend to pass it around–which some companies do, though it is becoming less common.
Another option is to sign up with something like Adobe, which has a service that locks an ebook to one computer. However, when I checked this out, I discovered that it costs tens of thousands of dollars per year … ahem … so you can image how quickly I dropped that idea.
More and more, people seem to be realizing that DRM is a lost cause.
in a related question, where did you get them from?
Good idea, but would it be easy for the buyer to remove the email address/website address?
You could set a password to restrict modification, but that can be broken pretty easily, I hear. It would make life more of a pain for people to have to remove the personal details, but yes, I’m sure they could find a way to do that if they really wanted to. Though I doubt they would bother, to be honest, unless these ebooks are really going to be big on the internet.
Thanks - I’ll think some more on this.
Is there any way of embedding a website address at the bottom of each page of the ebook, which couldn’t be removed? How have others here approached this problem?
It’s not easy to put anything in a PDF that can’t be removed, as there are so many PDF editing programs out there. Even if it is password protected (to prevent editing), it is apparently easy to remove that.
I once experimented with having a PDF with a black background and black text. In between the text and the background I placed a white image with the web address on it. So, if someone edits the PDF and removes the image with the web address on it, the whole document goes black. It seems a bit clunky to me, though, and makes the PDF file bigger than it really ought to be.
Thanks - nothing can ever stop the computer geeks, but what would be methods to use, to stop the ordinary guy on the street?
Stopping the ordinary guy on the street is putting a few paragraphs at the front and back encouraging them not to. Along the lines of the book is priced, this how I make my living, please consider … etc.
ralph.m idea of generating the book on each purchase could be expanded. Leave a book purchased by so and so on such and such date where someone can see it and if they are going to get rid of it and pass it on they will.
Then add a hidden one, like in an exif file as part of a photo in the book.
I would circle back to the original question is old school. Technology has changed how books are made available to the purchasing customers. You used to have to print. You used to have expenses you no longer have. If you look at some currently successful authors they have a more if you find this book, helpful, informative, good, etc please make sure to purchase your own copy at …
Many authors and artists are having success doing the be a part of the success. Be included in the community, be a supporter, etc. purchase a copy and be a friend on facebook, get access to a special newletter, get your review posted on a page, etc.
Make your customers your friends, goes a lot farther then taking a customers are the enemy attitude.
Michelle
Michelle
if you want to sell ebook then you need to take care of copywrite issue first then only start selling book in fact i would request you to better visit site which are selling ebook and get some idea from them.
There are some preventable measures, but I think it depends on the quality that people will be dare not to do.
If you make the ebook high quality with a brand attached to its name, then its just a haggle for the person to go through the details of re-creating one and selling it as their own. Some of measures can be pdf security, with live links, and brand image, details of content, adding personal story for prologue, all theses are elements which one person.
Keep in mind, anything digital these days are downloaded, uploaded.
It’s very common issue now a days and authors are little worries before published/selling their books. There you should have copy right option enabled.
But I’d suggest that either you can do password protect (once a user signed up they have an unique ID to access the link through given email) or protect through IP location.
It’s an Interesting and worthy question for publishing industry, I can suggest for unique license number for a single user or may be you can use trace record for IP address. Also some big companies e.g. Amazon, Adobe are following the same and some where we are also using…
Not sure how much you can protect but sure you will make it 90%.
As this thread is over two years old, there seems little point in continuing it.
Thread closed.