Generally, what is best format to store ebooks?

[FF2]

Okay, ignoring for the moment issues of "terms of service", contracts and legal issues.....

If I wanted to pick a format to use to unhitch my purchased and free "purchases" from Amazon or even the others like B&N, what do you folks who prepare for the apocalypse use.

Do you just strip the drm from the Amazon books (or their topaz books) and leave them as mobi? Do you convert them to epub? Or even rich-text-format? (is that proprietary?) I've also got B&N books - just strip drm and leave them as epub?

I gather from reading, changing epub to mobi, you might lose something. What above mobi to epub?

In other words, if I want to convert my books to the generally accepted GOLD standard what would be best? If there is a "best."

Thanks in advance.

[montalex]

Oh, now you're making me nervous! I once threw out 2,000 books, mostly hardcover, when I made a move and couldn't keep them in storage. I put the boxes on the street!! It wasn't all of my books, by any means, but it was still a shock. I left the boxes open on a busy street, so I don't feel too bad about it -- it's not like they burned. I'm sure they all found new homes.

What I do with my ebooks is: I immediately open them with Calibre, and let the plugins do their work. If the book was originally in epub, I convert it to mobi, and I keep the epub (more information, as you mention). If the book is in mobi, I don't bother converting. My Calibre folder is my Dropbox folder, so my books are stored on my hard drive and on Dropbox. AND, I back up my hard drive regularly.

I'm not losing these books! One of the really great things about ebooks: they are very, very small...

[exscentric]

As one that got caught in a format nightmare after doing tons of studies on a commodore and paying someone to convert them to pc format I purposed at that point to save everything related to me in .txt format. Thus far that format is rather standard.

Formats WILL change and/or pass into oblivion so best be prepared :-)

[Piper_]

I convert to and archive everything as epub. It keeps the images and metadata along with the html book all tidy in a simple zip file. (Even if epub died, we'll always be able to read the html files, since they're just the text with tags.)

[ATDrake]

So far, I keep multiple backup copies of my stuff:

a) the original DRM-ed version of the book with applicable unlocking information because sometimes the "tools" read things incorrectly due to lack of information and their accuracy later gets adjusted
b) the DRM-free version of the original, in whatever file format the tools spit out after liberation
c) a converted copy with annotations for fixing typos, major formatting errors, etc.
d) a copy of the fixed and tweaked unpacked files I work from when I make a "clean" version following my notes
e) said "clean" final version which then goes onto my Kindle for keeping

For my MultiFormat books, it's much the same. I keep a copy of the original ePub/whatever, even if it's completely messed up in its original state, for reference purposes.

One day I'll package up all the tweaked files into proper ePubs (I use ePub structure and conventions anyway, just haven't bothered doing the mimetype/manifest stuff) because Mobi is really a rather shoddy format by today's standards (except for its dictionary support, which is quite good), but for now I'm content to leave my unpacked and modified folders o'stuff as-is and only output Mobi "final" files.

Long story short (too late!): my vote is you leave them as whatever you get when the stripping tools are done, unless you need to convert to put them on a particular platform. And even then, keep copies of the originals around, just in case.

[Valentino]

I prefer to buy and store epubs. Mobi doesn't have alot of the advanced formatting that is used in epubs, for some books there is no difference, but others the epub has way better formatting.

Conversion to mobi strips this advanced formatting, but at least I have the better of the formats for later when upgrading to an epub compatable device.

Also it is easier to change the indents, justification or paragraph spacing to suit your needs in the epub and convert it to mobi.

[Jack Tingle]

From a narrow technical sense, .fb2. It was designed for archival storage.

Me, I store them in whatever format I bought them in.

Regards,
Jack Tingle