Quote:
Originally Posted by texasnightowl
If your primary concern was not having to rebuild/replace your collection as time goes by, which format and reader would you choose for today?
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If this is your primary concern I personally think you should be waiting or reseting your expectations. You should at least have the expectation of having to convert in the future and you might not be happy with the resultant formatting. I downloaded a bunch of public domain books years ago but I've been spoiled by the formatting of the books at MobileRead and I'm not happy reading the old books. One of the problems with Mobi is that it has to be backward compatible with old devices so some of the graphics are too small to read properly.
I try to save my library so it can be converted in the future but I think of it as an option. I'll try to convert in the future but decide then if it's worth it. For myself I reread less then 5% of my books. I've been purchasing books for approximately 30-50% cheaper so even if I have to purchase the 5% of the books I want to read again I'm still ahead. I consider it worst case.
I've been boxing up my old paper books and looking for a charity to donate them to so in my mind I've already written off my paper book library. Who knows in 30-40 years pulling out a paper book and reading it in a park might by like pulling out a grammaphone today.