ficbot--thanks for the buying habits info and all those nice sites. :>) Always good to know. Yup, Steve, Amazon has been an equalizer in many ways, and they have worked an awful lot of kinks out and made it easy for both authors and readers.
I used fictionwise a couple of times. I didn't like having to keep track of the credits/refunds/program and so on, but they can be a good place to find back issues of magazines if there is a particular story/author I'm hunting down. In general, I think they need to update their system to let authors have a little more control (including smaller publishers even if they don't want to go with Indie authors.)
For free e-books, most times I end up getting them from author sites. For purchasing, it just depends where I run across the book. A lot of times I hear about it on forum from either the author or a fan. The problem becomes creating an account at all those darn sites and keep track of them. I don't mine purchasing from an author site if it's just a paypal click. I'd prefer an author site to having to register with yet another retailer site.
I'm liking smashwords so far. I understand they will be partnering with BN (which may mean that BN will get some actual ebook things really going!) I also found the diesel-ebooks site quite intriguing. They seemed to have one of the better selections (I haven't actually purchased anything there yet.)
Maria
Catch an Honest Thief (sorry, kindle only!)
Sage (oodles of formats!)