[ficbot]

The only DRM I currently buy is secure eReader. I used to leave it as is and read on my computer or ipod Touch, but when I got my Sony Reader, I started liberating it and have loaded everything onto it.

Now, it seems epub is the new thing, and I am not sure what to do. Shortcovers is very tempting, and now I could buy it at the Sony store too. I could read it on every device I own and it would not 'need' liberating. But I have been reluctant because I am already pretty entrenched at Fictionwise and am not sure I want multiple bookshelves spread out all over creation.

So I am curious, if every device one owns will read epub because it is the new standard, what is the incentive to 'liberate' it? Is there still one? On the plus, if one 'liberates' and loads it onto a device with text to speech or some such feature, you can use your book regardless of whether the publisher 'allows' it or not. And it seems the file sizes of my 'liberated' books are much smaller than most of the free books I have downloaded from the Sony store.

On the minus though, 'liberating' is a lot of work. I have downloaded the epub scripts and not tried them yet, but I know that my secure eReader books need a bit of formatting clean-up once I get them freed, and that can be tedious and time-consuming. There is definite appeal, for a heavy reader like me, in being able to just download, load into the reader and go without needing to do all this work and wind up with a not as pretty plain text file in the end.

As long as I can load them into Calibre for proper tagging and loading, I suppose it does not matter which 'source' one buys it from, and it seems like epub support is being built in to every new gizmo these days. So I am wondering if it might be worth it to start buying from the Sony Store and Shortcovers in secure epub rather than in secure eReader from Fictionwise. Is this a good idea? Is there a downside to doing this? Do any of you who regularly buy secure epub see any compelling reason to liberate, or not to?