I Want to write my first eBook

by jkiley
7 replies
I want to write my first ebook and want to give that away for free when people buy my product. My question is how do I distribute? Should I send them a link to the pdf to download? If yes, how do I make sure that link is only used by somebody who bought it and is not all over the internet.

How do you lock your ebooks?
#ebook #write
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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    • Profile picture of the author jkiley
      Originally Posted by alexa_s View Post

      You can protect the download link easily enough, I think. The problem is that it's not so easy to protect the PDF itself, and there's nothing to stop people from sending it to each other simply as an email-attachment.

      The only secure way round that that I've found (after many months of asking, here and elsewhere) is to use a ".exe" file for e-book delivery. Most customers have no problems with this at all, as has been confirmed here by several people who sell these for a living, some of whom have had no adverse comments or refund requests in tens of thousands of sales.

      But it's still a very contentious, rather emotive subject, because some Warriors - though clearly totally out of step with the general marketplace on this point - seem to feel terribly strongly that ".exe" files aren't a good idea and that under no circumstances would they actually open one themselves!

      So, it depends who your customers are, obviously.
      OK, maybe I just don't know enough about PDFs. How do you create an EXE out of it? and how does that prevent them to email it to each other or putting on some hacker's website?

      Good thing in my case is that my product is a software, so people have to download a .msi anyway, and I can just include this PDF in that installation package, but I am still lost as to how to protect it.
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  • Profile picture of the author nick1123
    I personally do not like exe files. I would prefer PDF but they are a little bit more difficult to protect.

    There are ways to protect the download link but I don't worry about that too much.

    If I lose 10% of my business due to theft I am not going to spend all my time worrying about it. I'll make a lot more money by looking for ways to scale and grow the other 90%.
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    • Profile picture of the author jkiley
      Originally Posted by nick1123 View Post

      I personally do not like exe files. I would prefer PDF but they are a little bit more difficult to protect.

      There are ways to protect the download link but I don't worry about that too much.

      If I lose 10% of my business due to theft I am not going to spend all my time worrying about it. I'll make a lot more money by looking for ways to scale and grow the other 90%.
      My fear is not the email around of that pdf. My fear is that pdf will show up in lot of downloadable sites. But I think what you are saying makes sense.
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  • How about delivering the content using a mechanism other than an ebook?

    For instance, you could set up a (free) membership site on a secured Wordpress blog and drip feed the content there over a period of days. People would have access to the same information, but this would require much more effort on their part to recirculate.

    The idea for them of being a member also gives the content a much higher perceived value.
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  • Profile picture of the author Roy Carter
    Have a look at DL Guard from one of our own warriors.
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