There are thousands ebook titles on Ebay. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say more people are familiar with Ebay than all of the other venues for ebook sellers combined. First, what automatic delivery systems for ebooks sold on Ebay are being used? What have you found the pros & cons to be? How is the security issue addressed?
Second, I'd like to figure out is if there is a way to automatically deliver ebooks when purchased through Ebay. At the same time if the buyer shares the ebook with friends that the friends will be able to purchase the ebook using an Automatic Payment System.
Currently if the book is automatically delivered there isn't much point in password protecting the ebook unless the ebook is protected through one of the online services that validates the ebook's password/user. I'd prefer to avoid such services because, IMHO, they are offensive to the buyer.
This is my suggestion for an 'ideal' automatic delivery system.
1) Verify that the amount paid is the full amount.
2) Send a link to the buyer for downloading the ebook.
3) With the ebook downloaded and opened there needs to be an one-time activation button that retrieves the correct Registration Code for the Password. Ideally the Password/Registration Codes would be be self contained like current APS systems.
4) Once the Registration code is retrieved the activation button needs to be permanently disabled. This would allow the buyer to share the ebook with friends. Friends would only see the preview version until purchased.
5) When the friend is ready to buy the ebook to unlock it an APS system would handle the sale and password. (To reiterate the activation button the original Ebay buyer used to unlock the book is disabled.)
The problem, as I see it, is step 3. How to create an activiation button that can be used once and is disabled on all subsequent copies of the ebook.
More importantly the ebook should allow the user to share it and subsequent users still have to buy it using APS.
I'm not certain that this would work, but is it possible for the automatic delivery system to deposit a cookie that enables that enables the activation button to be shown? Is there a way to make the cookies secure so it cannot be copied onto another system?
