PayPal Community

First, thank you for your understanding of my not liking to hold the paint can.  If you feel comfortable, then by all means...   As to other venues, I think there may be one, but I have no direct experience with it.  I was told that Amazon was building a gateway, like PayPals, with buttons.  When we enquired, they tried to leverage our printing/restoring assets, so we backed off that research.  I would think, being that they do support ebooks, that if such a portal exists, it might be more receptive to you.    As to author, self publishing, etc.  No, not in the traditional senses, and certainly not not in a traditional for profit mode.  'Librum', translated, means 'scales'.  'Der Librum' is 'place where the scales are kept'.  A community center.  You will find such in most OOM communites and enclaves.  OOM: Old Order Mennonite.  Closed 'gated' communities.  In our case, we do and teach paper restoration, so our 'library' is quite large and oriented to restoration work.  Located near D.C., our two primary customers are the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress.  And as aluded to before, it was Librum crews who did most of the digitization you enjoy on Google, Internet Archive, Hathi, etc.    Piece of trivia for you: ever wonder why the pdf standard is roughly 83dpi?  Back in the day of the 'big push', the scanner teams would field with Apple II+ computers with Imagewriter I printers.  The print head was replaced with the scan head, and the best you could get was about 90 dpi.  We have come a long way!   ... View more

Good that you looked at the code.  And yes, on the public doc.  No on modification of the dummy index file, the paypal button code controls the direction to your content.  Again, look at the button code faq/etc.  Again, the dummy index file only prevents viewing of contents of the sub directory of the html server.   Now me salve my own conscious.  You are going to lose your shirt if you sell 'digital media' via paypal.  1) you have NO sellers protection.  There was a major policy change.  Now, customer files a complaint, customer automatically gets product and his full money back, and you are stuck with the paypal fees.  2) you will not be offered the digital media pricing system, for which we are grandfathered.  You are looking at a minimum fee (loss) of thirty to thirty five cents, per transaction.    Not to scare you, but to give you some ballpark figures.  The Librum used to have a small 'by the page' page server of it's content.  It went from approximately $120 a month PROFIT to negative in about a week when paypal went 'physical only'.  False chargebacks, just to rip off the content.  .  Paypal got it's money, and pointed to the policy change. We are STILL looking for a way to 'come back'.    Another issue that will plague you is your ebook format and content protection.   What format is your ebook in?  There are no 'universal' formats, excepting PDF.  There is no universal content protection that has not been broken, to include PDF's.  You will get ripped off, if your content is good.  There is quite a bit of our content on Google, Hathi, etc, all stolen.    You will be painting a target on your back.  And I do not enjoy holding paint cans.  Sorry.   ... View more

A 'dummy' index file is just that.  On most linux html hosts, if there is no index file in a sub directory of a web host, then the directory displays.  This forum software will not let me put an html example here.  Sorry.  There is no way, that I know of to get around this via html.  Thus the contents, to include file names, are hidden.  But the requester can try to guess at the file/directory names.  Try http://www.librum.us/gallery/media/  See how it works?  Yes, there are files there, and directories, but you can not see them.   As to the constant movements of things in PayPal, and trying to find things, well, that is one of my pet peeves.  After you get to, say, a dozen such buttons, it becomes a logistics nightmare, as PayPal refuses, despite the many requests, to put some sort of sort functions in there.  Best general tip I can give is to look under business, then buttons, then look at my existing.  We have *FOUR* pages of buttons.  We have to be constantly 'hunting'. ... View more

BIN.  Buy It Now.   Research the online guides/faq on buttons.  During the creation, you have three panels/pull-downs.  The bottom or third panel has a place to put the url the customer is to be returned to after completion of sale.  Instead of sending them to a html page, send them to the actual file.  Example: http://www.librum.us/stacks1/afb-1949.exe instead of http://www.librum.us/stacks1/index.htm.  <-- dummy for demo.    The file they just bought either comes up in the browser (like a pdf), or a download link activates (like an exe).    The customer does see the link in the browser pane, so protecting the actual directory from being viewed that the file is in is required, use a dummy index.htm file in the directory to block that.    No, you can not use a shopping cart/etc.  Also, fyi, if you have quite a few buttons, there is no way to sort them, so a bit of prior organization is sometimes needed... ... View more

Yes, using BIN buttons, and a hidden location somewhere on the web.  The secret is to have the customer return to the url of the book after payment.  Look on third panel, bottom for where to enter it.  In our case, the url is to a pdf.  ... View more