Learn about the uses of Cloud Ebooks and how they can be useful for you.
Cloud ebooks can add great value to your ebook projects and put full control at your fingertips. Before using cloud ebooks, it is important to get a full understanding of the concept behind it. Then it will be clear how it can fit into your ebook projects. Let’s start by taking three different scenarios, recognize the problem, and explore how cloud ebooks can fit as a solution.
In the first scenario, you've created an ebook and exported it as a desktop application. You've distributed the ebook to your users everywhere. Later on, you decided that your ebook content is valuable and you want to monetize it. Well, with your ebook application out in the wild, it is too late to take it back. People will share it, and everyone will get free access to it.
In another scenario, you are a college teacher and have created an ebook for your students. You've exported it as a web app on your school’s website. For your students’ convenience, you have also exported it as an Android mobile app. Your students read and study the ebook from their mobile devices at home, then at school, they use the web ebook on the school website. However, they discover that they have two different versions of notes and annotations, one for each platform!
In the last scenario, you are a trainer of a certain skill set. You create a training ebook and export it into a certain format. You give it out to your subscribed readers to read your training content. However, once the users unsubscribe from your service, you want to strictly prevent them from accessing your ebook. They had access to the ebook at one point, but you want that to stop.
Cloud ebooks are the solution to each of these scenarios, and many others. Cloud ebooks are a special type of ebooks, which are always connected to our servers. This way, although your ebook is exported and distributed, you still have absolute control over it. Any time you want to, you can turn the ebook’s access permissions from being publicly accessible to being private for a specific set of users, and easily add additional ones whenever you like. Not just your user list is stored on the server, but all your users’ notes, bookmarks, and highlights too. This means whichever platform or device your users access the ebook from, all their annotations will be retrieved exactly as they'd left them.
Another primary advantage of cloud ebooks is security. This can be achieved in different ways. With content encryption, the ebook content is encrypted using a server key that is impossible to decrypt unless the rightful user logs in. To prevent piracy, cloud ebooks can have Device DRM, which means the same cloud ebook can be opened only on a specific number of devices, no more. This guarantees that the rightful user is not distributing his login information to others.
A cloud ebook is basically a space in the cloud (server) where a lot of data related to a book is stored. When you export an ebook (e.g. an Android app), you have the choice of setting this ebook as a new cloud ebook. This will create the space for you in the cloud, where the user login list will be stored along with their data. Now if you want to export that same ebook content to a different platform (e.g. a desktop application), you can choose to synchronize this ebook with the first cloud ebook already created. This way both ebooks share the same user login list and data. Users of both platforms will find their notes, bookmarks, and highlights synchronized. You can synchronize as many ebooks as you wish to a single cloud ebook.
Cloud ebooks are created and managed inside Kotobee Author.