Web startup / server / sales ---help ?

[Grummor Grummorson]

Hello everyone,
First off, i'm not a lazy bastard, and i DO try to research on my own before posting questions asking for help, so don't flame when u read the thread. I am in trouble and i don't know where to start, so all i'm asking for is help on what to research. Thank you in advance.

My team and I are trying to offer a service to the other students on campus. Our text books cost a lot, and since we all use laptops, we would like to offer cheaper e-textbooks, which don't seem to be offered anywhere. The publishing and author royalties, we have them covered, what we are having trouble with, is understanding the physical part of the question: How does it work.

Our plan is to make it is that people are able to buy their e-textbooks from us, at a 40% reduced price ( due to the elimination of bookstores). The way we wanted it to work is very similar to Kindle, which basically will be a software that , upon purchase connects to our database, downloads the file, and displays it through the software. However, we want to make it so that it is virtually impossible to copy such a textbook. ( this is why we are not making the file auto-destruct after 6 months, like many publishers are).

Our technical questions revolve around the following 2 things:

1) Do we need a dedicated server, as well as a backup server? And if so, then how does the software connect to it? through website, or like ports or idk. If it's a server, is there only one kind of server, and it does the same job, or are there many servers?

2) Is there another way to achieve what we want ?


Again, if you can, please like point us to where we should search, for info, or at least WHAT to look for, because we are all new to this, and so when we tried researching servers, there was a lot of content that we simply didnt understand. Like, if we have a server, do we need to buy a machine, or can we setup a normal computer to act as a server, and do we need a separate internet connection? And whats the difference between servers and simply uploading stuff to the web?

We want this server to only cover the our expensive, we don't want any profits, so we can offer textbooks as cheep as physically possible, and so, if you could point us to a website that roughly breaks down the costs of running server, it will be very appreciated.

We ahve looked at amazons S3, but we didn't understand if the transfer amount "in" includes every type or transfer, or only the stuff that gets downloaded to our server, and if so, whats the price for transfer when people download FROM us.

Thank you in advance.