Ebook DRM: Protecting ebooks from sharing & theft

DRM

DRM With risk comes the likelihood of loss. In business, risk spells out as financial risk or the potential to lose money. Creating an online or digital product involves taking significant risk partly because such products are new and novel. For instance, if you decide to manufacture a widget, you are essentially making the decision to produce a number of them over the next two to three years — each one exactly like the first one.

But with regards to an online content product such as an ebook, every book that you write and publish is new. It requires a team of highly skilled people to produce, edit, publish, market, and share your unique work to a discerning and paying audience. Even after you have published your work, distributing and marketing is another challenge you must conquer including reaching out to new customers in new markets and countries. All of these factors can increase distribution risks.

Understanding ebook distribution risks

Before the onset of the Internet, the cost of preparing print books and transporting these physical goods to the market were financial risks that content producers and publishers had to bear. And the ultimate threat of sales performance was shared by distributors and marketing agencies. But with the era of the electronic world, distribution costs reduced significantly. By creating a digital master and sharing it over authorized networks, a wider audience could now be reached at a minimal cost. However, this introduced a new form of risk – the dangers of piracy and unlawful, uncompensated distribution.

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The availability of free content while filesharing over peer-to-peer networks has substantially altered the economics of the content industry. Unfortunately, the exact economic impact is so colossal; it has been difficult to gauge. Peer-to-peer filesharing services have transformed content businesses in numerous ways, and not just in low sales. By downloading the content they like, people now expect that they no longer need to pay for creative works and continue with the practice, thus threatening the profit structure of the industry in overall ebook sales.

The online dilemma

The electronic means of producing and distributing your content holds numerous advantages for you as a content creator and producer. However, therein lies a paradox — this thrilling opportunity is also attached to exhausting dangers. Let’s look into this to understand it better.

The good news of digital networks

  • New opportunities for content owners to reach consumers directly.
  • Unique opportunities to produce and distribute content for less money.
  • New distribution channels, revenue streams and ebook products.
  • New formats to share stories such as through PDF, EPUB, MOBI and more.

The bad news of digital networks

  • Every consumer can access an online product, including pirates.
  • Anyone can produce and illegally copy content.
  • Selling online undermines the existing lines of traditional print businesses.
  • Involves a significant investment in a digital product with the potential for poor sales, making it an expensive and risky avenue.

Why you need ebookDRM for online distribution security

Each time an individual downloads your ebook and shares it with his or her peers, you start to lose revenue as the copyright owner of your content. This is because, instead of buying your book, people are sharing it for free. And while the Internet makes publishing and sharing content easy, it can be almost virtually impossible to monitor such piracy. Hence, to ensure that the copyright of your digital content is protected, you need to look into ebook DRM or digital rights management.

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Ebook DRM employs robust technology to protect the copyright of your content. With ebook DRM, your protected content gets an added layer of security and ensures that piracy is stopped in its tracks, thus consequently saving you from revenue loss.

Selling online-content products is less expensive than print, due to the minimal costs of e-publishing and no print run costs. And, you can further unlock the value of your published content by ensuring zero delivery charges and instant worldwide delivery.

But in the absence of copyright protection, you could lose all the value that your content holds. Ebook DRM ensures that your return on investment is substantially increased by ensuring you are rewarded for your intellectual property instead of losing it. Moreover, not only can you control who is viewing your content, but also what they are doing with it.

Ebook DRM helps you define a lifecycle by setting an expiry date to your content. Once the expiry date is due, viewers can no longer access your content, thus ensuring the integrity of your creative works. Besides, you can also prevent IPR theft by implementing ebook DRM on your published works. You can monitor viewers who have viewed your ebooks and are attempting to share their authorization illegally to others and who those people are.

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