[ficbot]

There is a book I want which is only available at Shortcovers right now. Jordan from Shortcovers, who posts here, has been very nice about answering my questions. But I am still really nervous about buying something with DRM.

There is one kind of DRM I do buy regularly because it is fairly straightforward (if a little time-consuming) to remove it, and I wind up with an HTML file I can do with as I please. But other than that, I do not buy DRM because I had a very bad experience when I owned an eBookwise where I bought a book from them before I knew better, and the DRM was so restrictive that I could only read it on that one individual machine, so that even if I later bought another machine from them, I would not be able to read it. Ever since then, I have vowed not to buy DRM unless it is something like the one I mentioned which I remove as soon as I get the book.

I worry that even though epub is becoming the 'standard' and I have been assured many types of machines can read it and will support it in the future, the method of encrypting the DRM might change, or if I switch from a Sony to something else, there might not be software to 'validate' the ebook (right now this is done through my Sony account) or some other software change down the road might make the book unreadable to me. I am wary about investing a ton of money into books which might not hold up to longer-term future reading. I *did* spend a lot of money over the years on this other DRM format, but as I said, I was able to remove it and I am confident that my HTML files (which can easily be cut and pasted from a web browser into a plain text document) can be read for the duration.

On the other hand, epub *is* the emerging standard...

Am I worrying too much? Do you guys feel safe buying DRMd epub files? Or do you worry this is going to be a bad 'investment' down the road?