Tales of a First eBook Purchase

Richard over at Read/Write Web talks about buying his first encrypted ebook. His experience is very much like my own...

Read/Write Web: First eBook Purchase:

"The Fictionwise download process was very smooth and to unlock the eBook, I just had to enter my name and Visa card number. So all in all, everything went well. Experienced eBook readers will be going 'Duh!' at that statement, but when it's your first purchase of an eBook you worry about things like whether the installation/unlocking will be successful and what will happen if the format is incompatible etc. So I commend Fictionwise on a user-friendly and intuitive download process, particularly for the extensive help webpages and explanations of eBook formats and hardware requirements (as I mentioned, that was missing from Amazon)."

These are exactly the same thoughts that ran through my mind except the ebook retail contenders for me were Fictionwise.com and Powells.com. Fictionwise won out because they really took the time to answer my questions. Likewise I also chose eReader for my first encrypted ebook and if I must have a DRM scheme I think I prefer the eReader approach on a PDA. If an encrypted ebook is not available in eReader/Palm format then I usually buy it in MobiPocket format which is device dependant. I do not like Mobipocket's DRM approach as much, however their reader software is pretty nice and there are a lot of titles available in that format.