Hi, I am in the proccess of writing an E-Book, I am going to start selling it at $200 .. But the thing I'm worried about is, people can easily copy, re publish, re sell this and claim it as there own.. Is there anyway i can go about making it harder for people to do it If anybody has some suggestions let me know Thanks
I think the chances are smaller because of its price. Its unlikely a person willing to pay $200 for an ebook will want to share it for free.
Jualian, you can easily create ebooks that are copyright-protected. Obviously, not 100% copyright-protected/hacker-proof, but for the average person it will be. You'll need Adobe Acrobat (expensive though excellent programme) or OpenOffice.org (free though good programme) to apply copyright-protection measures. You'll need to create a PDF-file that disables the extraction of content, applying changes and requires a password to open. You send the password only to those persons who paid for your ebook. That's not too difficult, isn't it? BTW, if you want to sell any copies of your ebook, I suggest to drop a zero from the price!
Protecting it that way alone wouldn't help.. think of peer to peer file sharing. Sadly there's no real way to stop that..
Indeed, you can't stop file-sharing on p2p-networks or other means (e.g. email). I still think the method I suggested would (greatly) reduce piracy.
The best way to protect your work is to offer paper books (you can find cheap book printing solutions online) but if you're going for an electronic version, this is how I would do it (considering it's not some junk 2$ report but actually a book worth reading). 1. Each book has to be registered to a person whos first and last names, house and email addresses are visible on every page (header) 2. In footer of every page you clearly state any reproduction of an ebook is prohibited and will be prosecuted by local law authorities (your lawer) 3. Dedicate a page or two about copywriting and TOS of your ebook at the end 4. Before you sell a copy, ask for personal information via email and CLEARLY STATE that any unauthorized production/reproduction of your book WILL BE prosecuted and taken to court This looks like a lot of work but it really takes few minutes all together and it can decrease warezing your book by more than half. Since your ebook is protected from editing and reprinting in Adobe, if you ever find any copy of your book online on warez forums you can simply open it and look who bought it. Next step it to sue him. This will be easier as you think because you have warned the buyer of copy rights (and told him you will sue him) as in the book itself just like via email before the order was taken.
Have the eBook in images embedded in a flash file and have a button to "flip" the pages This way people cannot copy and paste directly...forces a couple of hoops (but if they really want to take it, they can) But I mean there's millions of eBooks out there for free, I doubt anyone will buy an eBook for even $50 unless you have THAT much credibility (which you might) but I mean I think you can make a few sales but it will take some effort I wish you good luck though..if you need any techinical advice on how to make it harder to copy, you can always feel free to shoot me a PM