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The file format issues with ebooks do not appear to be going away any time soon, sadly enough. That said, you can get straight access to ebooks without worrying about being tied to a website forever (I think the Kindle has perhaps skewed people's perceptions of ebook readers in general after the ironical disappearing 1984 incident). As I understand it, most DRM schemes mean that you have to register your device, and once that's done, you can access forever all the purchased DRM books you put on it. That's the way it seems to work for the Ebookwise 1150 anyway. I imagine that library lending puts some sort of time restriction on the file, but you'll have to ask others about that.
All this having been said, probably the best option for "preserving" purchased books is simply to de-DRM them so that you can easily change formats later and not have to worry about it. This may work better for some formats than others. It is quite easy to do with .lit, for example, but only works for some Kindle format books at this time. I would assume it works for other formats as well. Forum policy, of course, restricts us from saying how to de-DRM anything. But there are plenty of write-ups about it on the Internet, and once you figure out how to de-DRM any of the popular formats, you can do conversions using the Calibre program, so that the book can be loaded on a different device you may purchase in the future.
Fictionwise, by the way, sells multiple formats, as does Books on Board and many other ebook sites, so you should have options for finding something that won't "disappear." Not sure about the actual Barnes and Noble website itself, however. The nicest thing about ebooks for me is that you can find a lifetime's worth of public domain works for free, and the library on MobileRead will have many versions formatted specifically for the device you buy. But I understand the draw for new stuff, as well.
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