If youre not concerned about Internet piracy and eBook protection, you should be. Internet piracy isnt just a small loss to your business; it can destroy your business. EBook protection is necessary if you expect to keep selling eBooks.

Protecting Your eBooks From Illegal Copying

There are three main steps for protecting your eBooks from being illegally copied. First, you should make it illegal by obtaining a copyright on your eBook. You can theoretically win a court case by a common law copyright, but getting an official copyright gives your case more strength, and can often prevent legal proceedings.

Most file sharing websites have received multiple lawsuits from people just like you. Regardless of whether they win or lose a case, lawsuits are expensive business. With a common law copyright, you may or may not have to go to court. If its a clear-cut case of copyright violation, where you have the clear legal right to protect your document, theyre more likely to back down.
Copyrights Dont Protect EBooks at All Times

Monitoring the Internet is a necessary part of a fully considered strategy to protect eBooks. Just because you have a copyright doesnt mean that the pirates wont try to steal your documents. There have been many PDF files illegally uploaded to file sharing sites complete with the copyright symbol in place. You cant defend your copyright if you dont know its being violated.

For this, its a good idea to have Internet monitoring tools. If you merely do a Google search two or three times a day, youre less likely to actually find it in time. You will also spend all day looking for it and chasing false leads. Many websites have an internal search engine, and your document name will be entered in these search engines to see if its on the site.

PDF Protection Starts with Document Locks

The two steps mentioned above dont help much with PDF protection if you dont put a lock on your document. Using PDF protection software for the most part gets rid of the need to copyright and watch your documents. Here is how a proper eBook protection program works.

After a customer buys your eBook, they download it and have license only to open it on the computer they downloaded it onto. It can be copied to other computers, uploaded to the Internet and sent by email. However, any other computer that the file has been copied onto cannot open it.

As an added bonus, the right kind of eBook protection software can enable you to reclaim your documents when you give a refund. As a business owner, you will often have to give refunds, so you need a way to take back their access to your file, or youre just giving it away.