any recommended ebook store?

[areteichi]

Hello, I'm just curious if anyone can chip in some suggestions.

I don't own any of the portable devices other than my now-5-years-old laptop (well, and a stupidphone and a mp3 player), but I'm becoming more interested in buying books in the electronic form.

It's mainly that I move quite a lot as I study at different universities in different countries. I have lots of books, and as I soon realized, paper is EXTREMELY HEAVY!!!

I don't like to carry that stuff nor do I like paying for their shipping costs. So it came to my mind that I should probably look into buying some of the books I'd be interested (probably just the non-academic ones) as an ebook, just to save some space and on shipping costs.

Since I don't own any of the e-readers, I'm using Lucifox (Firefox extension of Lucidor) to read the ebooks I currently have. I'm just wondering if anyone can recommend me a store or two where I can buy some new books in the electronic form? I'm mainly interested in buying in ePub format (preferably without DRM) since that's the format Lucifox supports.

Oh, and lastly, it would be nice if I can buy from anywhere in the world (though this might possibly rule out all the candidates).

Thanks a million!

[LowSky]

i know it isnt the best answer but i use the kindle and nook stores.

both have android apps and i can read my books on my pc, android tablet or, android phone.

[swisscow]

I use BooksonBoard for fiction

[mamamia88]

i prefer kindle. can read on pretty much any device.

[samalex]

For technical books O'Reilly is still my fave... they have an OpenBooks section with many books for free or they have a regular eBooks section with most of their books for a charge.

Other than Amazon, B&N, and Google Books I also like the tried and true Project Gutenberg which has never let me down with great content.

Something else that I think is way overlooked are free audio books. LibriVox offers free audio readings by real people, not digital voices, of many to most of the more well known public domain books and literary works online. I have an app for my Android that lets me play books, but you can easily get them on any phone, mp3 player, computer, or even the Kindle or Nook.

Lots of great content out there --

[forrestcupp]

Kindle is awesome. I prefer it over Nook store. Kindle has a huge selection of free classics.

[areteichi]

Thanks to all for the replies so far!

Just a general point I want to make, as I was looking up the ebook stores that were mentioned in this thread (among others), is that most of them are way too expensive! They're usually only 10-20% cheaper than the paper? I know people have been making this sort of criticism but it certainly doesn't sound fair. Another reason for hesitation of buying books in electronic form...

Kindle is awesome. I prefer it over Nook store. Kindle has a huge selection of free classics.

i prefer kindle. can read on pretty much any device.

i know it isnt the best answer but i use the kindle and nook stores.

Unfortunately I don't have money nor any intention of buying an e-reader any time soon. As far as I can understand, Kindle and Nook stores some of you guys mentioned actually require you to own one of these devices, no? Maybe I'm missing something?

It could just be that I'm now so technologically behind that I don't even understand what you guys are referring to. I used to be a tech enthusiast but it all died out on me around the time when I went solely with my current laptop (which again is almost 5 years old).

I actually deleted all of my Amazon accounts last year (US, UK, Japan, Germany), so I've been Amazon-free for almost 6 months!

For technical books O'Reilly is still my fave... they have an OpenBooks section with many books for free or they have a regular eBooks section with most of their books for a charge.

Yeah I like the way they do business. Very open and fair. I wish they were selling other books too...

Other than Amazon, B&N, and Google Books I also like the tried and true Project Gutenberg which has never let me down with great content.

Yes I know about Project Gutenberg as well as places like Internet Archive. They are fantastic indeed!

Unfortunately, Google Books won't let me buy from where I currently live (Hungary). Do they sell in ePub? How are the prices? I would love to try it if I could!

Something else that I think is way overlooked are free audio books. LibriVox offers free audio readings by real people, not digital voices, of many to most of the more well known public domain books and literary works online. I have an app for my Android that lets me play books, but you can easily get them on any phone, mp3 player, computer, or even the Kindle or Nook.

Lots of great content out there --

Thanks for the input. I used to listen to audiobooks and recorded lectures before I go to sleep but I stopped doing that. Maybe I'll consider getting back to that again.

I use BooksonBoard for fiction

This looks interesting. I wished the website was nicer and they had more selection.

As was brought up already, I can get many of the classic (public domain) works from Project Gutenberg so I'm not so much interested in the old than buying the newly published works.

[forrestcupp]

Unfortunately I don't have money nor any intention of buying an e-reader any time soon. As far as I can understand, Kindle and Nook stores some of you guys mentioned actually require you to own one of these devices, no? Maybe I'm missing something?

No, you're missing something. You can install a Kindle app to read books on your Android/iPhone. If you don't have a smart phone, Kindle has software for reading your books on your computer. I'm pretty sure it works fine in Wine, too.

You don't need a reader to read Kindle books, and they have lots of good classics for free. You're probably not going to find better deals. ebooks aren't meant to be a cheaper way to read, but a more convenient way.

[areteichi]

No, you're missing something. You can install a Kindle app to read books on your Android/iPhone. If you don't have a smart phone, Kindle has software for reading your books on your computer. I'm pretty sure it works fine in Wine, too.

You don't need a reader to read Kindle books, and they have lots of good classics for free. You're probably not going to find better deals. ebooks aren't meant to be a cheaper way to read, but a more convenient way.

Ah, I see! Good to know.

As much as I would like to try that out, I'm not fond of Amazon and prefer to stay away from them for my books (or for anything for that matter).

I do have some political/ethical reasons against Amazon, but I have practical ones as well. I basically use Firefox + Zotero to maintain and organize all of my information (news, journal articles, bibliograhical info, books, my work, etc.), so I would like to be able to read natively on Firefox in Ubuntu (insofar as the books I read will also be cataloged inside Zotero). Hence my preference for ePub format.

I can actually get thousands of free ebooks from Project Gutenberg without going to Amazon, fortunately.

The prices of ebooks will eventually come down I'm sure, just as mp3s are cheaper than discs (by a greater margin than the prices between paper and ebook). I guess I just need to wait a little longer.

I'm quite struck by the fact that not many of you guys seem to be troubled by or concerned about the ebook formats as you guys are with other open-source related issues such as media formats/codecs, software licenses, etc. No offense intended, it just came as a surprise for me.

[forrestcupp]

I'm quite struck by the fact that not many of you guys seem to be troubled by or concerned about the ebook formats as you guys are with other open-source related issues such as media formats/codecs, software licenses, etc. No offense intended, it just came as a surprise for me.

Not everyone here is troubled by such things.