The eBook Situation

So I’ve got Kindle for iPhone, and I absolutely love reading books on it. But I’ve held off on buying very many because I wanted to play the “wait and see” game with the Nook, etc. Since the devices themselves hold very little interest for me (why would I carry around another device when my iPhone works great?), it’s the distribution platforms they’re based on that I’m most interested in.

So far, Amazon seems to have the best deal going, and I’m just about to pull the trigger on a whole bunch of books. I’m mainly worried about Kindle for PC and the upcoming Kindle for Mac. They look nice, but I’m not sure how the whole DRM thing works. I reinstall my operating systems with a blistering frequency, and I don’t want to end up with unreadable books.

Forgive me if I’m the only one with a memory, but I went through this whole mess years ago with Microsoft Reader. I bought a bunch of books to read on my computer and Pocket PC, but I can’t read ANY of them anymore because I “activated” them on “too many devices”, so they will no longer open.

I really hope that doesn’t happen again. Ugh. I hate DRM.