I know it's impossible, but what do you do to at least limit the unauthorized copying of your ebooks?
Sorry to tell you, its next to impossible. Unauthorized copies of ebooks will find their way to warez forums somehow. . Its a unfair world, you have to live with it....
One thing I do is lock up the editing features of the PDF (using Adobe Acrobat Pro). Nothing is foolproof, but your goal should be to make it as challenging as possible to the masses and just move on. You can get into licensing, unique copies (helps you track down who shared it) and all sorts of stuff. But at the end of the day it's a time/money issue.
If you want to sell your ebook in PDF format then you may definitely want to do the following: 1) Disable "Selecting and Copying" Content 2) Disable "Printing" 3) Disable "Screen Shots" If you have time and if you can manually send passwords, then password protect your ebook too.
What do you think about a disclaimer in the page footer? Something like: "UNAUTHORIZED COPYING WILL BE PERSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF APPLICABLE LAW" (it looks scarier in all caps )
I think you mean "prosecuted." Depending on what country the thief lives in, you might not be able to use the law against them. I read about a product called White Knight Protector that lets you activate/deactivate licenses for each product. Only one license can be assigned per PC so if someone sells their copy, the buyer won't be able to use it.
Licenses could be annoying. The best way i think is to put a watermark that says your website. I think the future of ebooks will be in obooks. Online ebooks which you have to sign up for and you get a license for it. (I dont know if this has been made before)
I have pdf pro. I need to figure out how to do this. The copying thing is easy to get around but I will still implement that. I want them to be able to print it, though. So I'll take my chances.
One thing still left out. You forgot to talk about video recorders. You could record a video in 800x600 (set your screen to 800 x 600. Then watch it. And screenshot your video. What do we do with that?
You can do this via the security settings. Keep in mind though, as has been discussed in the thread, there's no real way to prevent someone from copying it if they are really determined. They could even read it out aloud and then have it transcribed! And there's also software too that will unlock the pdf security settings -- so that's not necessarily going to be the perfect solution. Personally -- I'd cater to my genuine buyers and accept there's a percentage that will always do the wrong thing. You could add in bonuses to your product that aren't just eBook related -- so those bonuses might not be able to be shared (eg email support). You could also just "brand" your pdf the whole way through so that even if it is distributed without purchase, your website/other products will be prominently displayed in every copy/on every screen, even if it wasn't purchased the right way in the first place!
Here's what I came up with: 1) a disclaimer in the book cover and the footer of each page saying that unauthorized copying will be actively prosecuted; 2) at the end, I put instructions on how to report unauthorized copies of the book, implying that an URL, a forwarded email or a cached Web page is more than enough to track the guy; 3) Free updates for life for those who can prove they bought the book regularly; 4) a small part of the eBook promotes a service that I do so even in the worst case, I still get a bit of free advertisement...
People do video tape ebooks and then take snapshots. PDFs are vunerable but there are other ebook software that don't even allow video recording.