"Steven R." <steverummel / comcast.net> writes:

> CSS can be used to format pretty much anything (within reason) in a
> custom' manner.
>
> What would stop an author from writing a book, publishing it online
> with watermarks and a EULA (or equivalent) holding purchasers
> responsible for the watermarked editions of the book, and then
> selecting a format for the book (font size, style, etc.) that could be
> used to generate a CSS file through which the book would be printed to
> .pdf (for example) and downloaded by the purchaser?

Watermarks are mostly an cosmetic feature---I've seen originally
watermarked PDFs without watermarks.  In doubt, all you need is a full
version of Adobe Acrobat, but I don't know the details.

> Is there a reason an author would not use such a system, were it
> available? Is the retail channel so powerful, it makes such a scheme
> unworkable to content creators?

It's probably "just too much work".  And I don't know of a CSS
solution that does really high-quality typesetting.  (With XSL-FO,
that's different, but even less people know this.)

-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen / gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org