How to secure ebooks?

Question

If I want to sell my ebook online, and want to make sure the buyer can not redistribute my ebook, how can I secure it?

Answer 1

I'll ignore the fact that obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy. Google says that you can try this site:

http://www.secure-ebook.com/

I have no experience with that service, nor am I prepared to vouch for it. Frankly, I'd rather that people freely distribute/learn from anything that I contribute to the world. But, I'm a tattooed old school punk/lover of all things GPL, so I'm quite biased!

I hope that this helps.

Answer 2

Simple - you can't.

You can distribute your own encrypted reader software that reads your encrypted ebook format and only runs on your own certified hardware.

And assuming that you have the technical and financial power of, say Apple, to achieve this - it will still be hacked.

Answer 3

There's DRM (Digital Rights Management) solutions for PDF's that will prevent casual copiers from distributing the PDF book. You'd need a DRM server online (I imagine you can pay for this service somewhere) to authenticate the PDF. But, as Martin said, you're simply not going to be able to prevent people from making copies if they really want to. There's just too many ways around it.

The downside, of course, of DRM, is that it makes things more inconvenient for legitmate buyers - your customers, the people you want to keep happy. And can be quite an annoyance. And it will hurt sales, as some people will simply refuse to deal with DRM'd products.

A better way is to offer special perks to verified buyers - downloads or other goodies.