Chapter 18
Selling Your Webbook

If your web­book is to have lim­it­ed access, that pos­es a slight prob­lem. First, you want to deny access to any­one who has­n’t paid. At the same time, you want to give them an oppor­tu­ni­ty imme­di­ate­ly to see a sales pitch for the book and buy the book (pur­chase a pass­word). Sec­ond, you want to give vis­i­tors who have become users (by pay­ing for a pass­word) imme­di­ate access to the Table of Con­tents (TOC).

There are mul­ti­ple ways to solve this prob­lem depend­ing on var­i­ous mar­ket­ing strate­gies. The sim­plest way is to place two but­tons (links) on the cov­er. One but­ton named Login would be for paid cus­tomers and will take them to a sim­ple login page where they enter their pass­word get imme­di­ate access to the TOC. The sec­ond but­ton, labeled Buy the Book, takes vis­i­tors to a sales pitch about the book and a check­out page where they can com­plete the purchase.

Password Protection

The eas­i­est pass­word pro­tec­tion is to sim­ply make the fold­er in which the web­book files (web­pages) are stored inac­ces­si­ble with­out the fold­er pass­word. This requires no spe­cial soft­ware, only an elec­tion in your web host file man­age­ment (very easy to do). This tech­nique uses one pass­word. Every­one who buys gets the same password.

The advan­tage to this tech­nique is that some cus­tomers will give the pass­word to friends who will then have access with­out pay­ing. This is a loop­hole in your sys­tem that will pro­mote steal­ing with­out actu­al­ly per­mit­ting it. If you believe in giv­ing away free books to pro­mote sales, as I do, then this pass­word scheme becomes a mar­ket­ing tech­nique too. On the oth­er hand, if you don’t want any­one steal­ing the pass­word (to get a free book), you will think of this as a disadvantage.

The down­side is that some­one may post the pass­word on a pub­lic web­site some­where there­by per­mit­ting a huge num­ber of peo­ple to, in effect, steal your book. This may be unde­sir­able (or not) if it hap­pens. If it does hap­pen, it may be dif­fi­cult to repair the dam­age. You would need to change the pass­word and then inform all paid cus­tomers of the change.

Membership Software

Anoth­er pass­word tech­nique is to issue a unique pass­word to each paid cus­tomer. This takes a soft­ware sys­tem, but such sys­tems are read­i­ly avail­able. One tech­nique is to use mem­ber­ship soft­ware. A user pays for a mem­ber­ship and there­by gets a pass­word pro­vid­ing access to your webbook.

If a customer’s pass­word is post­ed on a pub­lic web­site enabling peo­ple to steal your book, the repair is easy. You need to change just the pass­word for that one person.

Final Word

Keep in mind that pass­words are incon­ve­nient for users. If there is a bet­ter way that’s appro­pri­ate for you to con­trol access to your web­book, you might want to con­sid­er it.