How eBooks can be very valuable By: Andy George

EBooks have a number of benefits over traditional book. These include following: ·Cheaper to create ·Quicker to create ·Easier to target a wide market ·High profit potential ·More versatile than traditional books

Lets look at each of these points in turn:

Cheaper to create:

The eBook can be created on a shoestring budget since it is possible for its publishing and marketing costs to be minimal. On other hand traditional book has a higher cost structure. This means author will have to overcome a tough sales target before they even consider making a profit on book.

The costs author will incur if he follows a traditional book format include: ·Publishing costs ·The profit margin that bookstores will want to sell book ·Distribution costs ·Marketing costs including advertising costs

Quicker to create

The eBook could be written and published in as little as 7 days. For other potential authors who work at a slower pace, whole process of writing and publishing a book could be done within a month.

On other hand for a traditional book time span between starting a book and writing it could take around 18 months. By that time information contained in book could be out of date especially if book is technology or research related.

So what can you do to prevent this from happening?

Here are a few tips that won't provide 100% protection, but will ensure that majority of users will not be able to easily access and steal your products.

1. NAMING YOUR DOWNLOAD PAGE

If you name your download page something like 'thankyou.html' or 'download.html' then it's a pretty simple process for average hacker to locate your page and download your product. Give your download pages a complicated name that is neither easy to guess, easy to remember nor easy to recognize.

2. CREATE 'NESTED' DIRECTORIES

In keeping with point number 1, this is just a question of making it more difficult for average hacker to find your download pages.

Let's say you're selling an ebook called "How to Make Your Hamster Happy". Now, let's say you're selling it at this URL: http://www.yourdomainname.com/happyhamster.

In this example, your sales page is contained in directory called 'happyhamster'.

Now, rather than store your download page in this same directory, you can make life more difficult for hacker by creating sub-directories (or 'nested' directories) for your download page.

Just create a sub-directory inside 'happyhamster' called, for example, 'srB45n' and another directory inside that one called 'trd12s' (or whatever) and then place your download page inside this directory. In this scenario, your download page would be contained at this, more hidden, address: http://www.yourdomainname.com/happyhamster/srB45n rd12s

Another approach is to place your download page directory in a separate place altogether on your server - thus making it even more difficult for a hacker to track it down.

3. CREATE AN INDEX.HTM PAGE FOR EVERY FOLDER

If you don't have a page called 'index.htm' in directory that contains your download page, then your host server will display a page listing contents of that directory.

Here's an example of a directory that doesn't have an 'index.htm' page: http://bizzydays.com/example. As you can see, contents of directory are there for all to see (and download).

Your 'index' page can be a regular page from your site or you can make it re-direct visitor somewhere else. You can see this idea in action by visiting http://bizzydays.com/free. As you can see, when you try to access that directory, you're immediately re-directed to BizzyDays.com home page.

To create your own re-direct page, simply paste following HTML code into Windows Notepad (or your web-editing software) and save it as 'index.htm' or 'index.html'. Now upload it to folder you wish to protect.