Where do you buy your ebooks?

When I started reading ebooks a few years ago I didn’t have an ereader. I didn’t even have a laptop, so I downloaded Microsoft Reader onto my computer and used that to read the books I bought. My first ebooks were purchased from Ellora’s Cave. I learned about Ellora’s Cave because of author Toni Blake, who I’d discovered and whose back list I had devoured. Then I learned she wrote under the pen name Lacey Alexander for Ellora’s Cave, so I went and bought every book she had there too.

I learned more about ebooks as an author when I started researching digital publishers to submit my books to. I bought some books from different publishers because I wanted to see the kind of books they published. I always bought those books directly from the publishers’ websites.

Then I started to learn about on-line bookstores, like All Romance Ebooks, Books on Board, Fictionwise, Amazon. I didn’t buy anything from them, though, until I bought my Sony reader. Then the whole digital world opened up to me and even the books I saw in the "bricks and mortar" bookstore by my favourite authors could be purchased digitally and read on my reader.

Now, the majority of my books are purchased at the Sony Store. I still go to the publishers’ websites sometimes, but the only reason I do it is because I know the author generally makes more in royalties from a purchase there, than from a purchase from a third-party vendor. But I love the Sony Store because it’s so easy – they have all my info, I log on, find the book I want, click, and it’s in my library, perfectly formatted. One more click and it’s on my reader. Even at My Bookstore and More, I have to enter credit card information, save the file somewhere and import it into my library. I’m sure the process is equally easy when buying from Amazon for a Kindle.

I don’t even do a cost comparison because it’s just so easy at Sony.

I suspect I'm not alone in this. I suspect that most people like to go to a "book store" even if it's on-line, and look at the selection of books from a variety of publishers, rather than having to search publishers' websites.

As an author I’ve been thinking about this a lot, as the Naughty Nine will know from my recent ranty posts. It’s no secret that sales of digital books at Amazon have grown tremendously over the past year. Apparently lots of people are buying their books there and I’m benefiting from those sales as an author. Publishers have different deals with Amazon. With one of my publishers, I earn a little less from sales at third party vendors than sales at the publisher’s site, but the volume of sales more than makes up for that. With another publisher I earn the same regardless of where the book is purchased and yet sales are so much smaller –which makes me wonder why?

So readers – where do you purchase your ebooks? Do you shop for the best price? Do you look for ease of purchase and download? Do you buy at Amazon because you have a Kindle (or B&N because you have a nook, or the Sony store because you have a Sony)? Do you automatically check out new releases by your favourite digital publisher? Do you look for specific authors or genres? Inquiring minds want to know!