I have two books that, I believe, are in such small niches that were either book to be posted in a web forum, my sales would plummet to almost nothing. Both books have about one or two websites devoted to the topic and any leakage of my EBook to those sites would certainly cause me financial harm.
On the other hand, I also am a firm believer in getting your books out to as many people as possible to help follow-on sales, however the books I’m selling can’t have follow-on products or services. It’s just the information that people need. I put it all in there, and I’ve decided to use password protection to attempt to keep my books off the forum pages.
Here’s how I set up password protection for my PDF Ebooks
1. I use Open Office to create my PDF files, so start by opening up your Open Office file.
2. When you’re going to create your PDF (see how this is done at Create my PDF EBook), choose the Security tab once you are taken to the Options Screen.
3. Click on “Set Open Password” to reach the dialogue box shown above. Enter a password twice to create a prompt when the PDF file is opened.
I choose to make my password attributable to the customer who bought my EBooks. So I will put their email address and/or name as the password. That way it’s easy for them to remember the password, however it’s also difficult for them to post the book online without identifying who’s violating my copyright.
4. If you want, you can “Set Permission Password” which will restrict how people can copy/paste the information in your book. If, for some reason, you don’t want your customers to be able to copy your text, set this password as well. Obviously set it different than the open password!
5. After creating the PDF book, verify that the password works by double-clicking the PDF file and typing in your password. If it works, your ebook should open right up!
And, as promised, I had another Michelob Ultra for this post. And here she is!
Till Next Time!
One of the better free ways to create a PDF Ebook
One of the challenges of creating E-Books is creating quality, free PDF’s of your Ebooks. Lucky for us, there’s a free open source solution, called Open Office.
Open Office is a Microsoft Office competitor that is completely free and quite capable of doing everything we need to write and create PDF files to sell as E-Books. In fact, if you’ve written your EBooks in Word, Open Office can view and create PDF’s from the Word document without any trouble at all! Now that’s what I like to hear!
Here’s how to create quality PDF’s using Open Office:
1. Download the Open Office suite. (It’s available in Windows, Mac, and many flavors of Unix)
2. Install the suite of tools on your computer. You can customize the install and only install the “Writer” if you’re concerned about using too much space on your hard drive.
The installer will take you through the steps, which is essentially just a few questions regarding registration.
3. If you have already written your e-book in a Microsoft Word document, don’t worry, Open Office can read and edit .doc/.docx files natively.
4. Open your document (or just a blank page to test the software) in Open Office.
Now…here comes the magic!!!!
5. Select File/ “Export as PDF” (ShaZaam!!!)
6. A PDF Options screen will open, and you can change some of these options if you need to for your free ebook. Typically, I leave them all at their default settings. However, you should always check that your links and any active images that you have in your file actually work in the new PDF file. If they don’t, these options may need to be changed.
7. When you’re done with the options, click Export. Voila! Now, you can save the e-book as a PDF file on your computer.
8. Double check your new PDF file for integrity. Open it up, verify all your links and dynamic content work correctly. Can you control-click on hyperlinks and have them open a web browser? If everything seems to work, guess what, you’re done!!!
That was easy, huh? Instead of spending a few hundred bucks on Adobe products, you just saved yourself a ton of time, learning, and money. Plus you’ve got a solid, quality product that you can now sell.
BONUS: I’m starting a new addition to this instructional “How to Write, Publish, and Sell Ebooks” site. Since I’m typically havin’ a fresh brew while I’m typing, I’m going to always include a picture of my drink for your viewing pleasure. Here’s the scene where I happen to be today. It’s a Michelob Ultra for now…I’m watchin’ my weight. What…you don’t believe me?
Ummm, that looks good, I’ll have another…See you next time! ! !
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