Quote:
Originally Posted by Buber
That (=not archiving ebooks) might be unwise. I have mine on 2 different HDDs and on the net storage. You just never know...  |
A few years ago, my process had been:
- Downloading on the PC, from various sources (Books on Board, Kobo, B&N, Amazon, ...).
- Stripping from DRM.
- Archiving in Calibre.
- Converting to my numerous target formats (ePUB to AZW and so on).
- Sideloading onto all my readers in the respective format.
After some time, I found for myself:
- I don't care about the metadata anymore. I can't understand, why there's no common spec, for example how to define the author's name. But I simply stopped bothering, it's not really important for reading the book. So I don't care about changing the metadata in calibre anymore.
- It's no use for me, to convert to other formats. I buy the book on my momentary favorite and read it on them. If I don't read it at once and in the meantime have another favorite, I re-purchase the book. Quite a few (300?) books I've purchased 2 or 3 times. Some (100?) I even have on all my readers in all formats they cover.
- I don't worry about archiving. Yes, I have about 700 eBooks in Microsoft's LIT format, which aren't of much use anymore. Although I had stripped them from DRM and converted them into numerous other formats, I'm simply not using them. The ones (maybe 100 out of 700) I intend to re-read I simple re-purchased again, on demand. I may risk to loose some books. But 2 or 3 years after having purchased them, it's not that important and critical.
And, so far all merchants that ceased business, gave me months of notice in advance. I easily could re-download my library.
And: I'm mainly buying from Amazon now. I don't see much risk of them dropping out of business "over night".
And: I'm buying maybe 500 books per year. Downloading and archiving them and stripping from DRM and converting at some stage simply became too time consuming and annoying.
Whereas I still have lots of paper books on my shelfs, I don't see eBooks "for eternity". To me, it's a purchase for the next 2 or 3 years...