eBookGuard

eBookGuard is actually a suite of three e-book tools – an e-book editor, an e-book encryption tool, and an e-book reader.

Though initially advertised as an e-book publishing tool with encryption capabilities for secure book protection, it certainly covers the entire e-book creation process – from the writing of the book, to its protected distribution.
eBookGuard’s editing tool may not offer as many features and functions as all the full-flavored text editors we all know and use, but it does provide you with all the basic functionality you need to create full-featured electronic publications. It allows you to insert images, add tables, lists, and a wide variety of fonts and color attributes. Looking at some of the reading devices available out there, the functionality eBookGuard provides is certainly much more than what you really need.

E-book encryption and protection is surely the program’s main asset. It allows you to add some useful metadata about the publication, including the book’s URL and an ad screen for commercial distribution. You can choose to allow printing and/or previewing of the book, or not. You can also determine that way it will be read – scroll or page by page – using the program’s reader. The encrypted document will be locked up using three four-digit “CryptKeys”, which can be randomly created by eBookGuard or selected by you.

The e-book can then be bundled in a convenient one-file package for easier and more controlled distribution. This bundle includes a reader, which will allow or disallow users to perform specific actions, according to your preferences. Therefore, the level of protection offered by eBookGuard is three-fold – first, at the encryption level, thanks to its three CryptKeys; second, at the licensing level (using ShareGuard or another similar tool); and third, at the reader level, which will prevent the e-book from being pasted and copied, printed, screen-captured, etc.