Self-Publishing Softwares and E-Book Security

An obvious advantage of writing an e-book is that, aside from the cost of a self-publishing software, you can produce an unlimited number of copies at zero cost. No printing press, no publisher fees, no warehouse to store copies, nothing.

But this doesn’t mean that the price of the software is your only cost. The fact is that the self-publishing software doesn’t market your book for you. You still need to advertise your e-book, as well as set up a website of your own. So while digital publishing removes the trouble of dealing with a publishing company, it also means that you don’t get a company to do the marketing for you. You’re on your own. And the majority of people who dream of writing their own e-book thinking they’re going to get rich off it don’t know how to market effectively on the web and so end up in failure.

Another disadvantage to digital publishing is that piracy is easier with e-books than with hardcopy books. Digital pirates aren’t as easy to track down and punish as are hardcopy pirates. There are two ways of looking at this. One is that since only a tiny fraction of web users have the technical knowledge to hack into an e-book or disable its password (and only a small fraction of those users are dishonest enough to use that knowledge for piracy) you are not very likely to become a victim of piracy. And even if you do become a piracy target, the number of illegal downloads of your book probably won’t exceed the number of legitimate downloads so you might still make good profit.

But, on the other hand, illegal distribution of your book can become so widespread on the Internet that your profits will suffer significantly. This has happened to a number of authors.

Now, if you plan on compiling an e-book that you give out for free, then of course you don’t need to worry about piracy. In fact, you want as much "piracy" as possible, right? In this case you can just get one of the free e-book compilers since you don’t really need advanced security features. There is no sense in paying for self-publishing software if what you publish will be freely circulated (unless your subject requires advanced presentation features). But whichever free compiler you choose, make sure it has the ability to embed Web links so that your text can contain links to your Web business. You can download a free self-publishing software here .

But if you’re planning to sell your e-book, then there are a lot of security issues you need to address.

There are basically two types of pirates: those that are tech savvy and those that aren’t. Those that aren’t will try to steal your e-book in one of two ways: either by having a legitimate owner share it with them, or by trying to locate your e-book’s download page on your website. If thieves can guess the URL of your download page, then they can access it without going through the order process. And then your book is all theirs.

Of course you can password-protect your download page. This will fend off the non-tech savvy pirates, but the tech-savvy ones might be able to disable the password.

One way to help prevent this is to choose a download page URL that is highly complicated or unusual so that it’s difficult to guess. Don’t choose something dreadfully obvious like

www.yoursite.com/download.htm

Instead, throw in a bunch of numbers, for instance. Don’t be afraid to make the subdirectory URL a long nonsensical string, like

www.yoursite.com/al93wd4k28k07nt82x3d9gqh.htm

No visitors are ever going to have to type the URL into their browsers so there’s no need to worry about having a strange download URL. The only way visitors will get to it is by purchasing your e-book.

Your next security step is to password-protect your e-book itself, meaning that each customer who purchases and downloads it from your site is given a unique password to open his or her copy. This will be effective with a non-tech-savvy thief who gets a hold of a copy of your e-book. There are many self-publishing softwares that offer a password option.

But using an unusual download URL and password-protecting your e-book aren’t enough if you’re really serious about protecting your work. First, passwords can be shared with others. Secondly, tech-savvy thieves might be able to hack your site and extract your e-book without guessing its download URL. And thirdly, tech-savvy thieves know how to disable passwords. So to protect yourself in such cases, the self-publishing software you get should have features that render thieves unable to access your e-book even if they get past its password security.

A very effective security measure is to require each visitor who purchases and downloads your e-book to register his or her copy with your site. Proper registration enables the e-book. And if the same copy gets installed on another computer, the e-book automatically prompts the new user to verify registration online. When your self-publishing software notices that this e-book copy being re-registered, that copy won’t get enabled and the new user won’t be able to access it.

Another reason why having such a registration feature is so important is that some buyers like to claim they’re dissatisfied with your e-book and request a refund just so they can end up having your e-book for free. It's important that you have the ability to disable the copy of someone who requests a refund from you so that he or she can no longer access it.

eBook Pro has a book registration feature that allows you to assign a unique password to each user of your book, and that automatically deactivates the copies of any customers who request refunds from you.

Some people have criticized this sort of feature by saying that requiring each copy to be registered makes access to your e-book too complicated and will annoy your customers. But this objection doesn’t really matter.

Think about it: If your customers want your e-book so much that they’ve gone ahead and paid to download it, they aren’t going to get fed up and return it for a refund just because they have to go through an extra step to open it. And that step isn’t complicated. Your customers have bought your book because it has something they need. So having this security feature isn’t likely to affect your sales, and the protection from piracy it gives you is, in my opinion, worth putting buyers through an additional security step.

Some pirates might still be able to break into a copy of your e-book and view its source. To protect against this, your self-publishing software needs to have a high level of encryption so that a pirate won’t be able to read your e-book.

Of all the self-publishing softwares, eBook Pro has the highest level of encryption. An e-book’s text gets decrypted only gradually as one is reading it.

Some self-publishing softwares (including eBook Pro ) also give you the option of disabling printing, so that a person reading a copy of your book can’t print it out and then produce illegal hard copies of it. But I don’t recommend you use this option. This is going overboard.

First of all, the majority of people (including me) don’t like to read books on a computer screen. It simply isn’t comfortable and strains the eyes a little. And it’s highly unlikely that a pirate could distribute illegal hardcopies of your book on a large scale because of the costs involved. Digital distribution is far easier and less costly. So don’t disable printing. It won’t really improve your e-book security. All it will do is cause needless discomfort for your honest customers.

So the best protection you can get for yourself is a self-publishing software that can register your e-book, that can disable your e-book if need be, and that has the highest level of encryption.

Another useful security tactic, in addition to the protection provided by your self-publishing software, would be for you to produce updates of your e-book reasonably often so that stolen copies of earlier versions are rendered less useful and desirable to consumers. That way you’re always a step ahead of the pirates.

In the event that you do become a victim of digital piracy, there is a helpful article by Internet entrepreneur Milana Leshinsky that discusses what courses of action you can take. If you like you can read it here .

Ultimately there can never be 100 percent protection, neither with e-books nor with anything else, for that matter. There will always some risk with anything you do in life. All you can do is take the best security precautions available to you. Right now, if you want the maximum security available for your e-book, then eBook Pro would be your best choice among the self-publishing softwares.

If you like you can read my personal review of eBook Pro .

Mark Kurban