[Darqref]

Like everyone else, I read a LOT. Unlike most of my family, I got hooked on Science Fiction in Jr High, and mostly bought that since. I've had a computer since my first apple ][ and have always read *some* things electronically, but not a lot of fiction until the web came around. By that time I was working in software test, and eventually had ready access to the web as part of my job. Sometime in the mid 90s I found a copy of Locus magazine, which had a list of sf that was scheduled to be published over the next couple of months. Nirvana! Shortly after that I started looking for publisher web sites as a side effect of looking for information about publishing schedules.

Somewhere in all this mess, I heard about a Rocket ebook. Sounded good, but I refused to buy something like that unseen, since it was priced above my flinch factor. Then I stunbled across the sample chapters at Baen, and found one book where the COMPLETE TEXT of the book had been included in the sample (The Apocolypse Troll, by David Weber). I thought it was a mistake, but shortly after that Baen started it's Webscription plan, and I finally found a local retailer that had a Rocket in stock. I looked at it, tried the screen, and decided that since it didn't flicker, I could read it well enough. I've bought every webscription since then (except for one month that I missed due to timing - when I went back and looked for it, I discovered I already had all the books in that month, and didn't buy it.) Baen's Bar became a cohesive community, and my biggest regret is that most of their authors don't come to Seattle much, unless their a GOH at NorWesCon. The great snippet hunt (for snippets of Lois Bujold's A Civil Campaign) was neat, and there was one delirious week or two when a jointly-compose epic about the adventures of skippy splashed all over - close to a thousand messages over two weeks.

(side note - you must understand skippy - he'd fit right in the Lounge here. It started in a Mercedes Lackey novel, when she red-shirted (tuckerized? I don't think he ended up dead) a person who hung around the bar - the character made a comment something like "no I'm not Rob, I'm his evil twin Skippy". Since then that character has become endemic around the Bar, even though the character's person mostly doesn't hang around any more. skippy always uses small letters, because he needs to avoid the capital gains tax. snicker)

At the start, I bought a few ebooks with Rocket's drm, but that sank quickly when NuvoMedia was sold (multiple times?). Most of what I bought came from Embiid books, with one or two others. Since then, I have ONE remaining book with Rocket drm that has not been re-released in Baen formats. (It was a sad day when embiid went south, but very good when the stuff that I liked drifted over to Baen.) That one book is one I've bought in hardback; bought in hardback-priced ebook; bought multiple times in paper and given away, such that new people ended up buying everything the author wrote. I am NOT going to buy another copy in ebook, unless *maybe* if it comes available in Baen format or Fictionwise multi AND it's priced much less than paperback.

I found out about MobileRead when people started talking about it on Baen's Bar. I followed the discussions about the then upcoming readers, and found a Sony 500 at Fry's. (Fry's should be sued by Sony for damage to sales, since they had it displayed in such a way that was hard to use, and quickly ended up broken, discharged, or both.) But the display was enough to make me realize I hated the joystick, and I waited until NAEB got their gen3s in stock.

Since I refused to buy drm content, and even Baen didn't put out enough to keep me occupied, I still bought (and buy) paper books. I have never wanted to buy hardbacks, because they take up too much room on my shelves. The ones I do have mostly came from Library discard sales, and most recently a few Lois Bujolds - it's hard to resist buying the hardback when you've gone to the store to hear her read from it! I always tell any authors I meet that I want their books in unencrypted ebooks, but so far I still buy paper. Sometimes I buy paper in a deliberate attempt to make more money for the author, sometimes I keep buying in paper so that I have a complete set of a series in one format. Since others in my family don't read electronically (yet), that allows me to share books with my sister-in-law and nephew. Mom is mostly blind, and uses audio books a lot, mostly from the library.

I'm grudgingly satisfied with my Cybook Gen3 at the moment. Since I've broken the screen once, I'm more paranoid about it than I'd like to be. I still have my Rocket, and used that while I sent the gen3 back to Bookeen. I'd really like the page buttons on the gen3 to work better, and if it breaks again I'm not gonna fix it twice. So far I haven't bought any drm content with the express purpose of breaking the drm, although I keep downloading the tools when I see them here. I don't want to let a publisher believe it is good to release books with drm, and haven't yet come up with a good method of handling that divided purpose.