I'm an author of training manuals for education (several Adobe titles), published in the U.S. We have a lot of interest in Canada for the books, but they aren't interested in printed copies...they want to negotiate for electronic copies and do the printing themselves (to avoid expensive duty fees).
I'm brainstorming with the publisher on the best way to do this. We have a couple of ideas but would love to hear from "the pros."
Scenario: A person buys the electronic version (1 copy). Many teachers still want a printed copy. Is there a way to use JavaScript to let them print the book only one time (then the Print command is no longer available)?
The publisher thought we could at least stamp the PDF with the buyers name/email address. At least that way if unauthorized copies emerged, we'd know who to blame.
Your thoughts? Who has other ideas on the best way to protect copyrights on a book distributed electronically?
Thanks!
Linda
Watermarking PDFs with a customer name is possible in a variety of ways, depending on how you are delivering them - if you're automating the process on a server, then both Adobe products (LiveCycle) and third-party scripting libraries in PHP, Java, etc. can open an existing file, apply text, then deliver the file to a website visitor. Which to choose depends on the nature of the file and what security features you need to support.
Of course whenever you give a print-quality copy to someone there is potential to steal it, so for high value products the only reliably-secure solution is to keep printing under your control, and sell a reduced-quality electronic version with printing completely disabled. Print on demand services such as Lulu tend to be a useful option when a publisher doesn't want to cover a full run, or a title is short-lived, as all the manufacturing costs are handled on a book-by-book basis. No sales = no costs.