Selling E-Books with E-junkie
If you are just selling ebooks in DOC or PDF or any other document format, it's just like selling any other file. For merchants selling eBooks in PDF format, we have a PDF Stamping feature that discourages sharing and can limit some other things the buyer can do with their file. We can also support most third-party eBook compilers and file-locking solutions.
E-Book Security (PDF Stamping)
We can stamp the buyer's name, email and their unique Transaction ID on the top-left of each page of the PDF they receive before they download it. Unlike DRM (Digital Rights Management), this is a simple, non-intrusive way to discourage buyers from sharing their PDFs. Unlike the various DRM solutions we investigated, our PDF Stamping feature allows a pleasant and hassle-free buyer experience and produces a file that all PDF reader software can handle without any trouble, which also eliminates the need for merchants to handle customer support issues commonly encountered with DRM.
Example Stamped PDF
Instructions
NOTE: Although we have tested it with many various kinds of PDFs, there may still be certain PDFs that could have problems with stamping. We recommend that you enable it for only one of your products first, then do a test purchase to see how your PDF is coming out. If you are happy with the results, then you can enable it for your other PDFs.
While adding or editing your product, enable Send transaction data to a URL, and then in the Payment Variable Information URL field, enter this (all on one long line):
http://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/o_plug.php?ej_stamp_pdf=true&pdf_allow_copy=y&pdf_allow_print=y&pdf_pwd=
- If your PDF is protected with a password, simply add the owner password to the very end of the URL, after the final
= sign.
- If your PDF does not have any passwords, simply remove the
&pdf_pwd= part from the end of the URL;
- If your PDF has a Master password and a different Read-only password, use the Master password in the URL (your original Read-only password will be retained in the stamped copies);
- If your PDF has a Master password that is the same as its Read-only password, use that password in the URL (stamped copies will not have a Read-only password in this case);
- If your PDF does not have a Master password and only has a Read-only password, use that password in the URL (stamped copies will not have a Read-only password in this case).
Each stamped PDF we issue to buyers will always be edit-locked with a random Master password, regardless of your original Master password or whether the file was even password-protected to begin with.
NOTE: We can only stamp password-locked PDFs where the Compatibility option has been set to "Acrobat 5.0 And Later" (or lower), not "Acrobat 6.0 And Later" nor higher. This is also good practice to ensure the broadest number of buyers can open your file anyway, even if you're not using PDF Stamping. If you are having problems getting stamping to work for a file with an author password, try uploading a file with no author password -- remember, we would add a random author password during the stamping anyway.
- Not recommended* - If you do not want the buyer to be able to print your PDF, replace
&pdf_allow_print=y with &pdf_allow_print=n
- Not recommended* - If you do not want the buyer to be able to copy-paste content from your PDF, replace
&pdf_allow_copy=y with &pdf_allow_copy=n (note that copy-pasting is different from extraction, which we disable by default, but we do allow extraction by screen readers for the visually-challenged);
- If you are already using our
o_plug.php URL for any of the other built-in integration features we offer, just append the PDF-stamping parameters at the end of your existing o_plug.php URL, as explained on our Integration page.
(* There is no technical reason why b. & c. are "Not recommended", but forbidding buyers to print or copy-paste content from an eBook that they have paid for is simply an unsatisfactory customer experience, so we don't recommend it.)
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
- This will not work for products using Package files from other products; this only works for Single File Download products;
- PDFs for sales which happen within 15 minutes of a new file upload will not be stamped;
- PDFs issued using your Seller Admin > Send Free Download Link function cannot be stamped;
- Do not enable this for products which are remotely hosted (file stored on your server instead of uploaded to ours); although it may probably work fine, it might also have unpredictable results in various scenarios;
- Ordinarily, if you update a file, and if a buyer uses their original download link again after that, they would get the latest file you'd uploaded for that product. If you enable PDF Stamping, the buyer will always get their original file, even if you re-activate their original download link. This only applies to the buyer's originally-issued link and does not affect any new links you might issue to them, using the Updates or Send free download link functions in your Seller Admin.
If you are using special compiler software to protect your e-book, you can still use our service. We can support virtually any eBook compiler that you might be using, as we support stored codes, generated codes, redirection and other features which the compilers rely on for your product activation/unlocking. However, these cannot be combined with our PDF Stamping feature (explained above). These are a few eBook compiler solutions we're familiar with:
- How to sell e-books created with ebookgold?
Ebookgold will give you HTML code that you will have to put up on a page on your website. You have to enter the URL to that page in their admin area as the approved URL for password generator.
Once you do that, place that URL in the email message that your buyer receives. You can do that while adding or editing a product in E-junkie admin.
- How to sell ebooks created with EBook Maestro?
You can generate keys in the "Reg. Codes" subsection of EBook Maestro. Please clear Reg. Name before you generate the keys.
Once you have the keys and the EXE of the ebook, go to E-junkie admin and click on "Add product". You will see an option which says "stored codes". Check that box and click NEXT or SUBMIT button. In the next screen you will be be able to enter your registration codes. Press NEXT or SUBMIT till you reach the button code screen. From here you will be able to upload your file and also get the purchase buttons you need to place on your website.
