eBook Marketing Strategy
Part Three: ebook Software
What You Don't Know Could Be Killing Your
Business: The Ins and Outs Of eBook Security!
It's a bigger problem than most people realize.
Information theft. Copyright infringement. Fraud. With the advent
of the Internet, where information is so readily available, it is
a problem that is growing in leaps and bounds. People often don't
understand that when they "borrow" graphics or text from other web
sites that they're actually stealing. They think this information
is "free" -- theirs for the taking.
Why is this a concern? After I tell you
about what happened to me, I think you'll understand...
I would like to take a moment to tell you
about a personal experience that taught me an invaluable lesson
about protecting my intellectual property from pirates, thieves,
and other such scam artists.
I'm sure by now most of you have heard me
mention my book "Car Secrets Revealed". It's been the #1 best-selling
car book on the Internet for the last 3 years. I now sell it as an
eBook for $29.95, but it previously came in two versions. The first
version was a paperback book that was shipped via courier, while the
second version was a downloadable file in PDF format that was
password protected.
When we first began selling the downloadable
version of "Car Secrets Revealed", there were not many options
available for packaging information products. In fact, at that time,
the only decent choice was PDF, so that is what we were stuck with.
We were successful with the PDF version for a long time, though we
were aware of the risk that we were taking by distributing the
book in this format.
Then it happened...
We received an e-mail from a very loyal
and concerned customer! He had just visited a web site that was
selling our book! At first we thought that maybe it was one of
our affiliates, seeing that we do have an affiliate program for this
book. However, when we went to the URL our customer directed us to,
we were stunned!
Not only had this person decided to redistribute
our Car Secrets book, he had even copied our sales material, using
his own secure server setup to take orders! This person was blatantly
ripping us off, filtering away profits that were rightfully ours...
and we never would have known had our customer not tipped us off.
After a long and nasty legal battle which
cost us a fortune in legal fees, the situation was resolved
and this person was forced to take any reference to the book off his
web site. What a nightmare
We were lucky though! Had our customer chosen not to bother reporting
this guy, we would never have known he was pirating our software!
Can you imagine the revenue we would have lost?
But worse yet, imagine if he had decided
to distribute the information for FREE -- this could have literally
destroyed our business!
Why would people pay for something that
they can download for free?
It's true that there are various eBook software
packages on the market with built in "security features", declaring
that your information will be protected with passwords. This sounds
good on the surface, however, you need to be careful!
All eBook software is NOT created equal!
Be an informed consumer when choosing your
eBook software and consider the following:
- Are people going to be able to "share" the
password you give them? I personally had an experience where
someone announced their password along with the file in a newsgroup
and I had hundreds of my product stolen! It was a very frustrating
and costly lesson! You want to be able to limit the number of times
a password can be used.
-
Are people going to be able to copy and
paste your information? If your eBook has no copy protection,
then you should expect trouble! Anyone with a word processor will
be able to copy and paste your information in infinite quantities!
-
Do you have control of your product, even
once it's in your customer's hands? What happens if your customer
requests a refund… or if they do not make well on their payment?
Do you have any way of disabling the product? Or are you forced
to let them keep it?
-
Does the software allow you to include hyperlinks,
graphics, audio, video, forms, etc...? Interactive eBooks
exude a kind of professionalism that gives you a HUGE edge on
your competitors. Be sure that your eBook software gives you the
option of including technologies such as Flash, Shockwave, Real
Audio, Real Video, Javascript, etc...
-
Does the software ensure that your eBook
is easy to compile? Once you've written your eBook, how long
is it going to take to compile? Will it take weeks of frustration
or a few short minutes of "point and click".
-
Is the price fair? There is no reason
for you to spend thousands of dollars on expensive software or
professional programmers. Cheaper alternatives exist… take advantage
of them.
These are questions that
you MUST ask when choosing your eBook software. Of course, now I'm
sure that many of you are wondering what, exactly, your "options"
are. Good question! eBook software offers a wide variety of formatting
possibilities, each with its own benefits and dangers. These include:
- Text files: While text files are supported
on any platform, they are very, very insecure! If you send out your
information as a text file, you can certainly expect it to be stolen.
- DOC files (Word Documents): DOC files
are not a very good way of distributing information products, chiefly
because it takes no time at all for the file size to grow quite
large -- they can take forever to download on a 28.8kbps modem.
DOC files do allow for slightly more security than text files --
you can password protect a Word document so that it cannot be viewed
until the password is entered. Unfortunately, you have no way of
controlling whether or not this password is shared.
Internet
Marketing Center have developed Affiliate / Associate Program software
from scratch and been using variations of it for the last 3 years
(they call it 