sell documents securely

Sell Documents Securely

Sell PDF & Digital Documents Online Securely. Stop sharing, theft, piracy

Protect IP

Protect documents from piracy & theft regardless of their location:

Stop unauthorized access
Stop sharing and distribution
Strong US Gov strength encryption, DRM and licensing controls

Restrict Use

Set Expiry

Revoke Access

Watermark

Log Use

Benefits

Free Trial & Demo

“Fantastic product… outstanding support.”

“We would recommend Locklizard to others”

“The clear leader for PDF DRM protection”

“Our ebook sales have gone through the roof”

“Simple & secure – protects IPR from theft”

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Selling documents, PDF files & ebooks securely online : stop sharing & copying

Why sell digital documents, ebooks, and PDF files online?

Selling digital documents, PDF files and other information products online has many advantages, including:

Reducing costs – saving on paper and postage
Time savings with electronic distribution
Reaching new markets
Environmental benefits (less ink and paper)

However, the main disadvantage is that electronic documents can be easily copied, shared and pirated.

Issues to consider when selling documents, ebooks & PDF files online

When selling information products online (digital documents) there are 3 main issues to consider:

What is the best document format to use – i.e. ePub or PDF
How to distribute documents – i.e. sell PDFs on your web site or through a third-party site such as Amazon
How to protect documents from copying, sharing, piracy and theft. How do you stop your intellectual property from being copied and shared freely or prevent someone stealing it and selling it as their own?

The commonest documents sold online are:

PDF files – generally ebooks or training courses
Legal documents and compliance documents
Reports – research reports, valuation reports, analyst reports, law reports, market reports

These all contain valuable intellectual property that represents monetary value to a business.

Preventing revenue loss should therefore be the number one priority if you intend to sell digital documents such as PDF files and ebooks online.

Choosing a suitable document format

There are really only two main document formats, ePub or PDF, to consider when it comes to selling documents online.

Choosing the document format you publish in depends on whether you are willing to trade multimedia and interactivity for security and consistency of appearance across multiple devices.

ePub

The ePub format (XHTML) was developed specifically for Internet publishing:

It supports multimedia and interactive (epub3) elements
You can create responsive ebooks that resize automatically on some devices (except for multiple columns and tables)
It can be better suited to smaller devices if you have very large documents as it is much lighter than PDF (i.e. has less features)
Users can choose between different ePub readers but you will find they all display content slightly differently
Users must install Adobe Digital Editions, which has been the subject of privacy concerns – Adobe collects data regarding reading habits and all loaded ebooks and transmits this information to Adobe’s servers in plain text
DRM protection is weak at best. There are many applications (including free ones) dedicated to the removal of ePub protection (DRM)

PDF

The PDF file format was developed to ensure cross-platform consistency of appearance (form and format) across all platforms.

If page presentation format is important (i.e. you want your pages to display consistently across all devices) then PDF is the better choice
Users must install a PDF Reader / Viewer
PDF DRM protection is available from multiple vendors who specialize in document security.

If you are reading this article because you want to sell documents online securely then the PDF file format is your only secure choice.

Where to sell documents online – sell PDFs on your website or a marketing platform?

Where you sell documents online depends on various factors:

How popular your web site is and how much traffic it generates
If you use offline campaigns to drum up online sales
How easily you can integrate ecommerce into your site and effectively manage it
How your payment provider handles chargebacks and what control you have over your documents when this occurs
If you willing to give away a proportion of your earnings in exchange for using a marketing platform such as Amazon (it can be 30% to 65%)
Whether a marketing platform forces you to use its own file formats or document security

If you sell legal documents online, sell research reports or sell analyst reports, you will most likely want to have these made available from your own web site since potential customers will have had a chance to see relevant information of yours that is related to their purchase rather than competitor information.

By comparison, an ebook aimed at the mass market may benefit from the promotion opportunities available from using a fully configured marketing platform (at a price).

Protecting digital documents from copying, sharing, theft & piracy

There are many different companies that tell you that they can help you sell PDFs online securely along with other electronic documents such as ebooks. But is that really the case? Here we review common security methods used and their value.

Passwords

PDF password protection is one of the commonest and cheapest methods of securing PDF files. PDF documents are encrypted with a password to prevent unauthorized access, and PDF restrictions can be applied to control some document use (e.g. preventing printing).

However, it is completely useless as a form of document protection because:

Users can share the document password with others and post it online along with the document
Passwords can be removed by password recovery applications
Adobe permissions (these control how a document can be used – i.e. allow or deny printing) can be easily removed in seconds by free online password removal tools

And of course, there is the problem of creating, distributing and managing passwords to begin with.

Secure Downloads

Secure download systems rely on generating a unique download link for each user when they purchase your documents online. They often combine this with a password protected file, and the user is given the download link and password after purchase.

However once the user has downloaded the file and has the password to open it, they can then share these with others.

So although secure downloads and passwords may stop users arbitrarily downloading documents they have not paid for from your site, they do nothing to prevent someone who has paid for a document then giving it to others for nothing.

DRM

A good document DRM system uses multiple security technologies to prevent copying, sharing, printing and piracy of your documents. These include:

Document encryption to prevent unauthorized access
Public key technology rather than passwords
SSL for secure key transfer to authorized devices
Licensing controls to identify users and devices
The ability to transfer licenses between devices – see ebook DRM & license transfer
Proprietary security techniques to control operating system behaviour – i.e. to stop screen grabbing applications from operating effectively
Dedicated secure viewer applications to control document access and use

See our DRM technology to better understand how these components make up an effective document security system.

Some document DRM systems rely on plug-ins to Adobe Acrobat but these bring with them their own problems, including compatibility issues, security issues (plugins can be circumvented by other plugins) and failure to continue working after Acrobat updates.

How Locklizard enables you to sell documents online securely & protect your revenue

Strong PDF Security
Unlike the simple removal of Adobe PDF password protection Safeguard PDF security cannot be easily bypassed.

With Safeguard:
- PDFs are only ever decrypted in memory
- Keys are securely & transparently relayed and locked to authorized devices
- DRM controls are persistent and cannot be removed
- We stop screen grabbing tools being used to take high-quality screenshots of document content
- We prevent printing to PDF files (an easy way to remove protection)
- We don’t use insecure passwords or plugins
- We use US Gov Strength AES encryption, DRM and licensing controls to enforce access and document use
Stops unauthorized use
Stops sharing, copying and pasting, printing, editing and saving – and unlike Adobe permissions, document controls cannot be removed.

Stops Windows print screen and third party screen grabbers and prevents printing to file drivers.

Regardless of how strong the password you use Adobe permissions can be removed in seconds and this can be easily done without using any password removal tools.
Non-removable dynamic watermarks
Dynamic watermarks (user’s name, email, company, date/time, etc.) can be displayed at view/print time.

You only have to protect the PDF once for all users and the correct information is inserted depending on the user who has opened the document.

This discourages photographs or photocopies (if printing is allowed) from being distributed since the user responsible is clearly identified.
PDFs are locked to devices and locations
PDF files can be locked to a country location, a domain, or a range of IP addresses on a user or global basis. For example, you might want to sell different digital products to different markets and ensure they can only be used in those locations.

PDF documents are automatically locked to authorized devices so they cannot be shared. If a user copies a document and keystore to another device it will fail to operate.
PDF Expiry & Revocation
You can use PDF expiry to produce time limited trials or to ensure only the latest information is ever made available.
- Set PDF files to expire on a fixed date, after a number of days, a number of views or prints.
- Individual user access to the same PDF document can be set to expire at different times.
- Revoke PDF files at any time no matter where they reside for single, multiple or all users.
- Revoke user access to a single, multiple or all PDF files.
User revocation can be invaluable if a chargeback is made and you want to ensure that a user no longer has access to documents they have not paid for.

Document revocation can be useful when you need to replace an updated report if a previous version was found to contain incorrect information, or if a user should no longer have access to a specific document.
Track & Log PDF use
Track & monitor PDF use – see when users viewed and printed your documents, from where and on what devices.

Safeguard uses US Government strength encryption and digital rights management (DRM) controls to enable you to sell PDFs securely and control their use. Sell documents securely online and stop piracy, theft, sharing & misuse.

Download Document DRM Software to Sell PDF Documents securely

Download PDF protection software that uses US Government strength encryption and digital rights management controls to protect PDF files without using insecure passwords.

Protect PDF files from copying, printing, editing, and unauthorized distribution. Lock PDF files to individual devices and locations so they cannot be shared.

Protect PDF files on your computer (no uploading of unprotected documents to the cloud), then upload protected documents to your web site or distribute them just like any other file.

See how you can benefit from implementing Locklizard document security to sell PDF files securely – prevent IPR theft, protect your revenue streams, save costs and time, and instantly gain access to new markets. Read our customer testimonials and case studies to see why thousands of organizations use Locklizard Document DRM to securely sell PDF files, ebooks and other digital documents online.