Normally, when we sell an ebook we assume the purchaser is the end user. What if the purchaser is giving them as gifts?
All of the systems I've seen for purchasing an ebook have been buyer = user. Of course, it can all be done by hand with emailing the password to each person who receives an ebook as a gift, but that can quickly get out of control.
Has anyone tackled this problem and if so what solution(s) have you found?
After considering different possibilities for allowing users to send ebooks as gifts, I've come to the conclusion that although it is a worthy marketing concept that currently there is not a mechanism in place to allow such a feature.
The only alternative is for the user to use something like PayPal and to send the money to the gift recipient. Not exactly the answer I was looking for.
I think that gift giving of ebooks is a good market to develop, but it isn't going to happen until a secure way of doing so is worked out.
I Would thing that pay pal and others for the purpose of giving gifts, should create a coupon system for things like secure ebooks the recipieant then mearly redeams his or her coupon dls and activates there book.
But I am programing chalanged so mabe this seemingly simple thing isn't
1. Buyer pays for the eBook 2. Buy chooses an eCard, a message, and the recipient's name/email. This info is stored in a database by a server script on the site. 3. The script emails the recipient the eCard link 4. The recipient goes to the eCard to read the message and get the gift ebook 5. The script potentially could record the recipient getting the card, and tell the buyer, so he knows the buyer got it
Obviously it'd be nicer if the eCards were nice - flash, animated, music etc.
For the eBooks, I'm contemplating a simple EXE download
What if the email sent to the receiver had unique identification number that had to be submitted along with the receiver's registration code?
The unique number and registration code would be recorded in a database, then the corresponding keycode sent to the same email address used for sending the card.
Seems like it is very doable with a little PHP/MySQL coding.
What you could also do, is in this database is store, keyed by the unique id, the message from the buyer (sender) to the recipient.
Next make a web page/script that when keyed by the unique id, displays this message
Next, in the eBook itself, you then frame or iframe the web page/or script.
This would then look to the recipient a bit like when a person writes a little personal message ("Happy Birthday Bob, Love Anne, ***
" type thing) inside the front cover flap of a printed book.
This would probably help discourage "sharing" too - and more importantly, would be a nice extra for the customer (buyer) and the recipient.
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