Libreture
Along with the recent news of Microsoft closing it's own e-bookshop have come the perennial views on DRM and its ills.
I completely agree. DRM is a huge consumer-rights issue that many people are simply not aware of until it's too late. What many of the articles miss though, is that there are hundreds of online bookshops that sell e-books without DRM, and who simply get on with the task day-in day-out.
There seems to be a consensus that e-books = DRM. The recent BBC article, Microsoft's eBook store: When this closes, your books disappear, seems to suggest that this is inevitably how e-books work. That you only ever licence them and never own them. I have 182 reasons to differ: Libreture's list of DRM-free bookshops provides a huge and varied selection of bookshops that don't encumber their titles with DRM technology.
Buying from these bookshops means you are sent the e-book files and off you go. Happy Reading!
In some ways, this has its own issues, and a core reason that Libreture exists, collecting and organising your e-books together. Buying from lots of different shops, with different selections, niches, authors and genres means you're supporting a huge range of businesses, not just that one monolithic corporation. These smaller shops are actual bookshops, curated and loved, not a giant online supermarket.
E-bookshops are an ecosystem, and supporting them is essential if we want to ensure we actually own the books we buy.
Support your online independent e-bookshop today and never lose your books.