E pluribus unum - Many epubs from one file?

[SigilBear]

I'm curious about how epub files work when they're being distributed to buyers.

Suppose I write a book and save it with the file name penguins.epub. Next, I make a copy of that file with the same name on my desktop and upload it to Amazon.

Suppose a grand total of three people buy a copy. I'm assuming Amazon has some software that automatically clones a book whenever a sale is registered, right? In other words, if Customer #2 buys a copy of penguins.epub, then Amazon will make a copy that Customer #2 is then allowed to download.

If that's the case, then how would I sell epubs on my website? I assume I would publish a copy of penguins.epub online to a secret location where no one can find it and copy it. I would then install some kind of software that would automatically clone and download my book when someone buys it. Is that how it works? Or would I just manually copy penguins.epub every time someone buys a copy and publish it to a page where they can download it?

One reason I'm curious is because I was wondering about how people connect with customers post-sales. For example, I believe Amazon keeps track of the books various customers have purchased. I assume they simply have a database that logs in usernames/passwords and the ID numbers of various purchases.

Also, I THINK I read somewhere that people who buy books from Amazon can "refresh" or upgrade their purchases if an author revises his book.

P.S. I almost forgot what inspired this question in the first place! I just wondered what, if anything, prevents a customer who purchases an epub from making copies of it and giving away to their friends?

[FizzyWater]

I don't think Amazon or any other ebook publishers maintain separate copies of each book sold and ties those to individual purchasers.

If a book is sold without any kind of digital rights (DRM), I'd say Amazon/whoever provides a link with the ability to download that one copy. NOTE: If you mean here that at this point there are now 2 copies - one on Amazon's servers and one on the customers, well, then, yes. Only way to avoid that is to stream and not allow offline downloads.

If a book is sold with DRM, then to some degree it depends on the version of DRM. Certain watermarking DRM would take the raw copy of the book and add additional code to make it unique to the buyer. If the buyer were to download another copy, it would again go through that process - the seller wouldn't keep a copy of that processed book. As an example, my old Palm Digital Media/eBook PDB ebooks included my name in the copies.

The party line is that DRM prevents customers from passing on copies. But most DRM schemes can be gotten around (and for the truly determined, anything that displays on a computer screen can be OCR'd with the right software).

What prevents a customer from giving it away is their own honor (and perhaps level of technical interest in learning how to get around DRM).

NOTE: I recently read a book by an author who included included a scene where one of her characters shares his ebook reader with another character, so they could talk about the book after character 2 read it. I absolutely loved that the author acknowledged that ebook readers want to be able to do what they did with print books - share them with friends who are book lovers.

[fbrzvnrnd]

a) Amazon do not sell ePub;
b) There is no "clone" copy of the ePub. The customer downloads the ebook from the server. If you want to sell ebooks in your personal store, you simply allow download for customers that payed for those.