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Also beware the publisher deciding to shut down its own website store.
HarperCollins used to sell their own books off their site, but then recently decided not to any more. There was a thread in the News forum with people wondering what was going to happen to their purchases (apparently not everyone got the email notification to download backup copies of their books before DATE).
Anyway, if you like SF/fantasy, Baen and BookViewCafé (authors offering their backlist books directly) are good: DRM-free, MultiFormat with single purchase, online reading, individual titles 4.99 or less, lots of free stories to sample.
And established print authors can also "self-publish" their backlists directly on Fictionwise, though these books can be prone to disappear if the author decides to go with another e-publisher later, like Mike Resnick did, moving part of his backlist to Baen's Webscriptions, and part to some imprint called ZappTek (unfortunately, the part that I wanted most).
For computer books, O'Reilly is really good: roughly the same terms as Baen/BVC, free updates to new editions for life. For romance, Harlequin/Carina Press seems to be okay (I've picked up some freebies there, and they work much like any other single-format store).
But Jasmine Jade (Ellora's Cave/Cerridwen webstore) has less favourable shopping terms than buying their books through another outlet: you have 5 days to download your books, then the link expires forever. No keeping your stuff in the "cloud". And no ePub directly from them last time I picked up a freebie, though their stuff is available ePub from other stores.
Similarly, it's better to get books from Mundania Press (sf/fantasy + horror/romance/mystery) via Fictionwise if you can, because the older books are only PDF on the publisher's website, but are all MultiFormat at FW. Though it seems like they've stopped putting up the newer ones via Fictionwise and now offer choice-of-single-format including ePub on them from their own website.
So sometimes it may be more disadvantageous from a consumer viewpoint to get your books directly, if having offsite backups, a particular format, and re-downloadability is important.
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