Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
You don't have to have a working Kindle, though - any registerable serial number will work, so you can buy a broken (but not stolen) Kindle and use it for downloading DRM-free titles and convert them.
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Honestly, at that point I'd start questioning whether it was even worth the bother of getting books from Amazon to convert at all. There's a limit to how much hoop-jumping I'm prepared to do simply for e-books, free, DRM-free, or otherwise and I'm a lot less willing than I was a year ago. Spending actual money on workarounds would not even enter into consideration for me, although I suppose someone more desperate and less able to run WINE on their non-Windows Intel-based machine might resort to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
At least with Amazon, they have made a VERY public commitment that your titles won't ever disappear, once purchased (and you'll always get the edition purchased, unless a newer edition is uploaded to the same ASIN, the publisher marks it as an update available selection AND you choose to get the update).
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Except in those cases where
one's Amazon account gets shut down for whatever reason, though at least the guy managed to get it reinstated for accessing his digital content, if nothing else.
And as mentioned previously, I did see on the Amazon discussion boards last year someone who was complaining because some of her indie books disappeared from her archives when the authors pulled them and IIRC there was that
Selena Kitt incident just over a year ago which made it to the News forum here, although some of that may be due to the wonky way that Amazon handles the archives in the first place and stuff which is still there just not being easily accessible any more.
Frankly, while it's nice that they've made that public statement towards archival commitment, I'd personally consider Dropbox et al. more of my friend for keeping backup copies of my paid purchases secure than I would Amazon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
Some stores go so far as to only allow downloads for a set number of times or for a short time period (the worst I've seen have been 14 days AND only 1-2 downloads, places I almost never buy a book from, as a result).
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Ellora's webstore, IIRC, used to be just 5 days and 5 downloads, plus choice of only 1 format, but then when they switched over to their current system, all the freebies I picked up out of hoarding habit became redownloadable presumably ad infinitum in multiple formats and automatically added back into my account without any further action from myself.
So possibly other retailers may learn better, with time. I'm certainly hoping so in the case of several of the smaller specialty sf/fantasy author stores. 24 hours and 2 download attempts for $9.99 a book.
Thanks, but I think I'll pop by the used bookshop for my C.J. Cherryh needs instead. (But to be fair they do offer a multi-format bundle for no additional charge (which should be the default option, really) and they've stated that if your download is wonky or you have other problems, you can contact them and they'll resend a new link.)
I have this personal suspicion that many of the decision-makers for the terms that e-books are offered under for purchase/download/re-download/finding in one's 3000+ item library do not use the product they are selling at all (at least, not on a regular basis, and they don't have more than one device/re-read stuff). It would explain so much.
In a way, it's weirdly more relaxing to know explicitly that the stuff you spend money upon could become inaccessible at any moment if you don't do your own proper backups. When it's upfront like that, at least you're less surprised when it happens than if you go on trusting the store to take care of things for you.
As someone who lives in a notoriously inclemental part of Canada, I know for a fact that the main reason "the cloud" exists is for the express purpose of one day raining down upon me at an unfortunate moment.
<-- these are not the conditions I cynically anticipate, but we have no other weather-appropriate smileys. Well, okay, maybe this one --> 