[JoeD]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Harry, I agree people should be backing their stuff up. I would guess that most people are not. We see stories here on a regular basis where someones account got hacked and they lost all their books. They post here, have access to info on how to back up books, and still do not. What makes you think that the average person on the street is going to do so? Personally, I would prefer to have the books be available from places that provide more protection then less. More importantly, I think it is important for people to have that choice.

It shouldn't be up to the stores to act as a backup service really. People should instead be educated on how to setup a backup method or have someone in the know do so. Consider that even if their books, music and film purchases were safe due to stores doing the backup, people would still lose any documents they've created, financial records, digital photos and home movies.

When there's free and trivially easy ways to setup a daily backup either to a usb drive or with another family member over the net, people really need to do so.

JKR removed that choice from people. Potter is huge right now and will probably remain strong for a long time to come. But will it be strong enough to justify the cost of maintaining the site and the servers that hold all the info? It is a risk that people are being forced to take.

There is no risk. If pottermore closes tomorrow, those who bought today and downloaded the book still have full access to it. Those who tied it to a store account also have an added "backup" (not that I really consider amazon a backup)

If other smaller authors start to do this, then life is going to get interesting and it could be detrimental to the e-book market. Why buy an e-reader when the sites you buy the books from cannot be trusted? People tend to be lazy and don't do things like back up their e-books. Why move to that technology when I can be so easily screwed over. I can only blame myself for losing a paperbook but why should I have to worry about the store closing and costing me my e-book?

This won't become the norm. Most authors do not have the profile to sell direct. They need retail stores. However, they should setup their own direct store with DRM free books for their dedicated fans to buy direct.

The people here are not the norm. Our practices and what we find to be common sense is not embraced across the market. It will hurt the e-book market if these types of stores blow up in peoples faces. A long term problem but it is a precident (sp) that I am concerned about.

People need to take responsibility for backing up their own data. As long as any store you buy from is DRM free, it should be your responsibility to look after the item.

They offer a limited number of downloads which acts as an initially safety net, but long term people should control their own data.

As for running the site, if book sales dry up they can reduce the number of servers needed. Depending how they have it setup, for example a number of cloud services would reduce costs to free when demand was small and scale up as demand increases.

The key point though is that regardless of how Rowling chooses to sell the books, she's done so in a way that leaves you legally in control of your future access to the book.

I imagine that should any other authors setup their own direct sales sites, they'll still have their books available on retail stores. Leaving the choice up to the customer from where to buy. Rowling is well known enough that she has no need to pay middle men money to sell the eBook.