Best practices for digital publishing: securing your content
There are two primary forces at play when securing your content: Encryption and Access Rights. Encryption significantly reduces likelihood of unauthorized access by encrypting the actual data of your ebook so it can only be read by authorized applications. Access Rights enable you to control the ways in which people can access your content so it’s always fair and reasonable.
It’s important to secure content because:
- It’s difficult to monetize digital content that can be freely shared
- It’s impossible to track usage of your content that has no restrictions
Best practices for digital publishing:
- For highest security sometimes less flexible user experience) always use Encrypted DRM for content that is highly value or has licensing contracts that require it. The trade-off for high security DRM is that customers will have a fixed set of apps that support Encryption and won't always be able to use their app of choice. At EditionGuard, we utilize Adobe DRM which comes with Adobe Digital Editions reader app for free. Adobe Digital Editions is globally distributed and localized for more than 12 languages. EditionGuard also provides end-user support for this app so your business doesn’t need to scale a support operation.
- For modest security but high flexibility, we suggest using a watermarking feature. At EditionGuard, we offer EditionMark as a method for delivering your content. This feature watermarks the customers personal or business information across the PDF content. This reduces the likelihood of unauthorized access, but keeps flexibility to a maximum. Since the content is not encrypted, your customer can use any PDF reader they prefer.
- For the least security, but ultimate flexibility: EditionLink. EditionLink is a simple way to distribute content that you may not want protected. In fact, this is a great method for sharing content that is ad-based where sharing will help your business. We include EditionLink in our service so you only have to manage a single catalog for your ebooks and decide how each is protected.
Making Access Fair and Easy
It’s important to understand customer expectations. Most consumers now use a mobile device as their primary computer. The next most popular segment is people with a mobile plus a desktop or tablet. The rest of the population is made of of special cases where there are 3 or more devices needed to access secured content.
Our recommended best practices for digital publishing:
Consumers expect digital access to be somewhat flexible. Our default device access setting is 6 devices per unique person, per eBook. This covers the majority of users, as users will inevitably upgrade their devices over time and need to have continuous access when they do so. However, we allow this device restriction setting to be changed to a value of 1. So if you have a customer with different expectations or have a legal reason to reduce this device limit you may do so.
Instant fulfillment
Customers expect to receive digital content immediately after the transaction has completed. This is why EditionGuard offers multiple ways for your content to be automatically fulfilled.
Turnkey Integrations
EditionGuard has developed a handful of simple plugins for your existing ecommerce site or app, including popular platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify. These are simple to get started with and require virtually no coding.
These integrations do most of the heavy lifting and provide an instant fulfillment link to your customer right at the time of transaction.
API Integration
Our robust API is architected to be flexible and powerful. It’s built under the REST architecture which means it will be high performance and easy to integrate with any modern or legacy system.
When is it best to use the API? When you have an existing or complex system that needs to deliver books in a unique way. Or if you use an e-commerce system that requires custom integration and isn’t currently on our turnkey list.
Peace of Mind with usage reports*
EditionGuard Dashboard tracks all fulfillment usage for encrypted content that is sold and accessed. This allows your business to know and report accurate, authorized access to your valuable content.
*Please note that EditionGuard does not track analytics usage at the user-level of content for privacy purposes.
As the demand for digital content grows, and the expectations of consumers to have instant access to content they pay for increases, EditionGuard is there to support your investment into digital publishing. We’ve removed the costly licenses and setup fees from our product, giving our customers the ability to protect and fulfill their content with low risk and high reward.
