How many different shops have you bought ebooks from?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, if we didn't include one-offs, then that would skew the results and make them incorrect.

And here I thought this was for fun.

I think in many cases "skew" could get hidden in the large middle range of six to 20. In my own case, just going after the low-hanging fruit, I've got Kobo, Amazon, Google, B&N, Sony, Borders, Books on Board, Fictionwise, i.e., the obvious ones, plus the University of Chicago. That puts me comfortably over six, yet even including various one-offs (or two- or three-offs) I can't imagine I'd go over 20. Done.

I'll add that of the above fruit, the only store that would be a dead loss to me if I hadn't backed up my books is Books on Board. All of my Borders and Fictionwise books transferred, to Kobo and B&N respectively, and about three-quarters of my Sony books. So if I had to start over again from scratch, most of my library could be reconstituted, absent the quarter of my Sony purchases, BoB and the few-offs. This is why I mostly don't bother to back up anymore, as the last stores standing are even less likely to do a midnight flit.

[cgsmom]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And eventually, Amazon decided to stop selling eBooks which meant that anyone that needed to download again to update the DRM could not do so because when Amazon stopped selling the eBooks, they also took the purchased eBooks away from the customers. So Amazon screwed over many many people at the time.

True enough. Luckily, I found convertlit before I lost access to all my LIT books. I even emailed Amazon about the LIT books I bought. They ignored my emails. It was a long time before I bought anything from them again. But time goes on. Now I buy mostly from Kobo or Google. Sometimes from Amazon if they are cheaper.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by cgsmom

True enough. Luckily, I found convertlit before I lost access to all my LIT books. I even emailed Amazon about the LIT books I bought. They ignored my emails. It was a long time before I bought anything from them again. But time goes on. Now I buy mostly from Kobo or Google. Sometimes from Amazon if they are cheaper.

I never bought an ebook I couldn't back up.
DRM-free from day one, Lit after Convert lit, mobi after deDRM, Kindle after...
It's not about sharing or even format-shifting.

It's the principle of backup.

I don't see cloud storage and/or eternal redownloads as a replacement for true backups. I've always done backups. Of all my data. On floppy, on tape, on DVD, hard drive, or solid state media. Usually on more than one.

Simple security.
If I bought it I want to keep it.
Especially books because I reread.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I never bought an ebook I couldn't back up.
DRM-free from day one, Lit after Convert lit, mobi after deDRM, Kindle after...
It's not about sharing or even format-shifting.

It's the principle of backup.

I don't see cloud storage and/or eternal redownloads as a replacement for true backups. I've always done backups. Of all my data. On floppy, on tape, on DVD, hard drive, or solid state media. Usually on more than one.

Simple security.
If I bought it I want to keep it.
Especially books because I reread.

Ditto. If there was no way to remove the DRM, I would never have bought a single ebook. I don't trust anyone to store my stuff for me. I do have a paid Dropbox plan, but I still make additional backups too. I'm pretty paranoid about my backups, because I've read about too many cases of people losing their stuff, for many different reasons. Accidents, financial crises, accounts closing, whatever. I reread, rewatch, re-consume often, so that makes backups even more important for me.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I never bought an ebook I couldn't back up.
DRM-free from day one, Lit after Convert lit, mobi after deDRM, Kindle after...
It's not about sharing or even format-shifting.

It's the principle of backup.

Simple security.
If I bought it I want to keep it.
Especially books because I reread.

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Ditto. If there was no way to remove the DRM, I would never have bought a single ebook. I don't trust anyone to store my stuff for me. I do have a paid Dropbox plan, but I still make additional backups too. I'm pretty paranoid about my backups, because I've read about too many cases of people losing their stuff, for many different reasons. Accidents, financial crises, accounts closing, whatever. I reread, rewatch, re-consume often, so that makes backups even more important for me.

Add me to the list. ConvertLIT saved a good chunk of my ebook collection when Microsoft decided to shutdown their DRM servers. Since then I have removed DRM whenever possible so my backups do not depend on having a server somewhere allowing me to read my books.

For backups, IMNSHO, you can never have too many backups scattered over multiple devices and sites. My main backup is external hard drives with the newest two being stored at work (grandfather, father son rotation). I also use server based storage and cloud services. Over the last couple of years, I've added more copies of the backups -- the process is pretty much automated so set and forget.

As the old IT saying goes: I know I'm paranoid, I just don't know if I am paranoid enough.

[Iseabel]

In my case, I think it's only four. I mostly buy from Amazon and Kobo, and also made a few purchases from our local shops in my country.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Add me to the list. ConvertLIT saved a good chunk of my ebook collection when Microsoft decided to shutdown their DRM servers. Since then I have removed DRM whenever possible so my backups do not depend on having a server somewhere allowing me to read my books.

For backups, IMNSHO, you can never have too many backups scattered over multiple devices and sites. My main backup is external hard drives with the newest two being stored at work (grandfather, father son rotation). I also use server based storage and cloud services. Over the last couple of years, I've added more copies of the backups -- the process is pretty much automated so set and forget.

As the old IT saying goes: I know I'm paranoid, I just don't know if I am paranoid enough.

Certainly, I have removed DRM from all the books I currently own. As far as I know, Sony's LRX was never cracked, though there were rumors that someone might have figured it out, but never released it to the public. I had a bit under 300 eBooks that I bought from the Sony store before the Kindle store opened up and was cracked, but I think that all but a couple were converted to epub when the Sony went epub.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Ditto. If there was no way to remove the DRM, I would never have bought a single ebook. I don't trust anyone to store my stuff for me. I do have a paid Dropbox plan, but I still make additional backups too. I'm pretty paranoid about my backups, because I've read about too many cases of people losing their stuff, for many different reasons. Accidents, financial crises, accounts closing, whatever. I reread, rewatch, re-consume often, so that makes backups even more important for me.

Same. I only bought LIT ebooks because I can create DRM-free backups with ConvertLIT.

I didn't buy any Nook or ADE books until i♥cabbages released inept.

Same reason why I buy Blu-rays and use the included digital codes instead of buying digital video directly.

[Polarpenguin]

Voted 6-20

Kobo
Amazon
Google play
Sainsbury*
Waterstones*
Sony*
WhSmiths*
BlinkBox (Tesco)*
Smashwords


*All are now defunct & libraries taken over by Kobo

[HLS]

I own Nook, kindles and kobos and buy-in all 3 echosystems

[Phogg]

I went with over twenty.

Just a few months ago I bought a "coming of age" style autobiography from a guy selling his own books in .pdf on a little website. He really needed to outsource his formatting and have someone edit it a bit but it was a pleasant read.

I have often found little gems available direct from author sites.

[larand]

Not that many, but I've hit all the big ones:

Amazon
Kobo
B&N/Nook
Google Play Books
Mobipocket
Sci Fi Arizona
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg Australia
Books.ch (Orell Füssli)

Very grateful to Kovid Goyal for Calibre and Apprentice Alf for his plugins, without which I'd be stuck buying everything from Amazon.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I never bought an ebook I couldn't back up.
DRM-free from day one, Lit after Convert lit, mobi after deDRM, Kindle after...
It's not about sharing or even format-shifting.

It's the principle of backup.

I don't see cloud storage and/or eternal redownloads as a replacement for true backups. I've always done backups. Of all my data. On floppy, on tape, on DVD, hard drive, or solid state media. Usually on more than one.

Simple security.
If I bought it I want to keep it.
Especially books because I reread.

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Ditto. If there was no way to remove the DRM, I would never have bought a single ebook. I don't trust anyone to store my stuff for me. I do have a paid Dropbox plan, but I still make additional backups too. I'm pretty paranoid about my backups, because I've read about too many cases of people losing their stuff, for many different reasons. Accidents, financial crises, accounts closing, whatever. I reread, rewatch, re-consume often, so that makes backups even more important for me.

Same.

In the same vein, I dislike the trend of software development moving towards online repositories for dependencies. Mostly, developers only post their own code on github. You download it, and it's like 100 kB. Then you start toe compile it, and it downloads 250 dependences (and dependencies the dependencies depend on), and that small 100 kB program suddenly takes 15 minutes to compile on a modern computer, and unexpectedly produces a 15 MB binary.

Who's going to guarantee me that I can still rebuild this program in another 5, 10, or even 20 years, after the online repository has been abandoned, or the versions that particular program needs are offline and not available?

I don't yet know a solution to this problem, because some systems just don't even work if they can't check their online repository.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Same.

In the same vein, I dislike the trend of software development moving towards online repositories for dependencies. Mostly, developers only post their own code on github. You download it, and it's like 100 kB. Then you start toe compile it, and it downloads 250 dependences (and dependencies the dependencies depend on), and that small 100 kB program suddenly takes 15 minutes to compile on a modern computer, and unexpectedly produces a 15 MB binary.

Who's going to guarantee me that I can still rebuild this program in another 5, 10, or even 20 years, after the online repository has been abandoned, or the versions that particular program needs are offline and not available?

I don't yet know a solution to this problem, because some systems just don't even work if they can't check their online repository.

Yep. everything in the cloud. It's a problem. The versions issue is going to be a major problem.

One solution is to keep a local git repository server and point at that. That's how we handled it at work, but over time, it's not sustainable. Of course, most of that stuff won't be working in 5 years or so anyway. The good news is that I don't work there anymore!

People tend to act like their internet connection will always be up and always be fast. I mean, what are you going to do when the zombie apocalypse hits? Me, I download all digital content that I purchase and remove the DRM - music, eBooks, audiobooks and movies.

[binaryhermit]

I don't even want to think about it.
I know at least Amazon, Phoenix Pick, Wildside Press, Humble Bundle, Weightless Books, Storybundle, Google Play, and Serialbox.
If freebies count, add Kobo and Smashwords.
I'm probably missing some too.
My name is binaryhermit and I have a problem, I guess.
EDIT: forgot Groupees and, if freebies count, Packt. Might also be missing some I don't have order reciepts for in my email inbox.