Forum Moderators: buckworks
I am not sure whether I am posting this in the right section, please forgive me if I am wrong and thank you for reading this message.
I am just finishing up an e-book which will be in PDF format and I wonder is it possible for me to hide the affiliate links in the PDF from showing because some of the URL are quite long and I am worry that the readers will think that the links are not genuine and not click on them. I know that by using JS, we can use the "mouseover" function to "hide" the link, so to speak but I am not sure how or whether we can do this in PDF? I am not sure whether this piece of information will help to make the solution simpler but I am using Acrobat Professional 7.0 to convert my initial draft from MS Words to PDF. Is there something that I can do with Words to hide the links?
My second question is about how to prevent the e-book from being shared by non-paying customers because the e-book will also be available in Chinese, 2 main Latin American languages and 2 other Asian languages and we are not sure whether that the Asians and Latin Americans will be "sharing" the e-book with their friends because we have heard a lot about the piracy activities in Asia and Latin American countries since the 1990s and not sure whether or not the situation is getting better nowadays.
I am aware that there are a few softwares that allow you to "lock" the e-book even in PDF format but most if not all of them have to convert the PDF into .exe first and the customer can only use it on one computer only. We want the customer to be able to download it and read it wherever they are but they can only use it for themselves, not sharing it with other people but they will be able to read the e-book even on a public library, not just on their own PC/MAC at home.
I think one can use the security settings in Acrobat Professional 7.0 for the job but I don't want the user to keep inserting the password everytime they want to read the e-book or even go online to read it. Therefore, I am asking for advice from some smart guys like you all here at WW. Can anyone help with these challeges or at least point the direction for me to start with?
Cheers
Thanks for your prompt reply and I appreciate your help but that is not what I am looking for. What I want to do is to "hide" some of the long affiliate links in the PDF so that when people move their mouse over the link, the URL on the status bar will show a shorter version of the URL. For example, an affiliate link which look something like http://www.widgetsite.com/mywebsite?LID=1234&DURL=http://certainpage.com ,looks like too long to be let say, the URL for the motor section of eBay (for argument sake) and I want to make it in such a way that when people move the mouse over the link, it will look like something shorter such as http://motors.widgetbaythingy.com in this case. I hope you get what I mean and hopefully there are already people who have done it before and would like to share their knowledge on this matter.
The second question is mainly about preventing people from sharing the e-book but with the criteria that I have mentioned in the first post. Thanks a lot for your time and effort to answer this post.
[edited by: shri at 3:49 am (utc) on Feb. 10, 2006]
[edited by: lorax at 1:26 pm (utc) on Feb. 10, 2006]
[edit reason] changed a link & delinked [/edit]
As well as being tidier, it would also have the advantage that if the affiliate URL ever changed, you could update the redirect and the ebook links would still work.
Thanks for your reply but I am sorry to say that I don't understand what you are trying to do. Can you please explain it in more details,Please? Thanks a lot for that, buckworks, and can you or anyone help with the second question or other way to solve the first question?
In your ebook the link is www.yoursite.com/links/link1.php
In link1.php you have
<?
header("Location: http://www.affilliate-link.com/?affid=1234");
?>
Which will redirect the user to affilliate-link.com.
[edited by: lorax at 1:27 pm (utc) on Feb. 10, 2006]
[edit reason] delinked [/edit]
The best form of protection I have seen is where you embed the buyers name in the PDF ( in the footer of each page ).
This way if they try to copy it or sell it it has their name in the footer.
