0

I have created a brochure that organizations are very eager to use. They do want to buy electronic license of it with their company on it. I'd like to price it with limitation to the number of "allowed" printouts. I.e. up to 100 printouts $300, up to 500 - $500. Any suggestion how to do this easily and also user friendly for the buyers.

I do know that once they print one copy they can make Million photocopies. First, let's assume that the companies are all very ethical - and in most cases they are and will not make photocopies. Then, if you have a solution for the future that will for instance show somewhere - printed copy # 5 out of 100 - that would be great (but given my initial research i do not expect this to be an easy solution). Just for your information the amount I earn is about 1500/year, so I wouldn't want to go into very complex and sophisticated and expensive solution - Thanks a lot for any suggestion!

Paul

6
  • Is your brochure copyrighted? can you get some sort of hologram or barcode to Make each copy unique? then have a barcode scanner this is no easy task to complete to have the brochure completely copyrighted for distribution. I would think this through very carefully. lest you get ripped off by companies. Feb 3, 2015 at 16:26
  • If you truly believe they are ethical, then just charge them for what they claim they use. Otherwise, actually implementing something like this is pointless, as the non-ethical ones will just print it to a new PDF once, and then use it endlessly. In the end you're just going to create inconvenience for the ethical customers. Feb 3, 2015 at 16:29
  • Check out this other SU question: How can I explain why DRM cannot work? Feb 3, 2015 at 16:30
  • In all honesty I wouldn't give anyone a digital copy of you work. Feb 3, 2015 at 16:33

1 Answer 1

1

I am going to attempt to answer the question that I see hidden in the actual question you asked.

I have created a brochure that organizations are very eager to use. They do want to buy electronic license of it with their company on it. I'd like to price it with limitation to the number of "allowed" printouts. I.e. up to 100 printouts $300, up to 500 - $500. Any suggestion how to do this easily and also user friendly for the buyers.

In order to avoid losing a potential sale the simple solution is to provide them a copy of the file that cannot be printed at all and offer to send them physical copies of the document for a price. If all they want is an electronic version of the file this compromise shouldn't be that hard to sell.

Of course you can also just increase the cost of the file itself that does allow printing unlimited copies to cover the potential opportunity cost from future sales in the future.

If you are asking if there exists a option within Adobe Acrobat or any of the major PDF editors that would allow you to specifically only allow a certain amount of prints the answer to that question is of course, no there isn't.

4
  • Except: pdfunlock.com "Remove passwords and restrictions from secured PDF files!" ;) Feb 3, 2015 at 16:44
  • @Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 - Which is the reason I simply indicate that they should just charge the calculated opportunity cost in addition to their normal fee. Of course I am not entirely sure how that program even works, seems like it would be easily defeated, if an actual secure configuration password was used
    – Ramhound
    Feb 3, 2015 at 16:53
  • Great - trully helpful - Thanks a million!!! How about if I hosted the content on my (or third party) website and place a login/password to the content and place a print button with a count of how many times the button was pressed. Would something like this work? Thanks again
    – Paul
    Feb 3, 2015 at 17:52
  • @Paul - It might be possible. But honestly it sounds like PDF simply isn't the format you want to use.
    – Ramhound
    Feb 3, 2015 at 17:53

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .