One concern with selling digital books online is increased risk of sharing or information theft. Some of the ebooks available online are in a PDF format, which has limited security options. The better option is using an ebook compiler. Security features vary by compiler but include options for requiring passwords or PINs and allowing the ebook to be read on only one device.
The author or publisher of an ebook is able to sell copies of his work directly from his own website using a shopping cart that supports electronic downloads. The shopping cart is installed where the author's website is hosted, or remotely hosted shopping cart services provide a snippet of HTML code for adding a button to the web page.
Amazon provides authors the ability to sell ebooks in the Amazon marketplace. Digital content services provide authors with a website, shopping cart, credit card processing and digital delivery. Ebook distributors turn the author's book into multiple formats to work with various ebook readers, and the ebook is presented in a number of book seller websites.