My girlfriend got on to the ebook train early, before the Kindle was available in our region, paying ~$500 for a Cybook that reads Mobipocket format files.
A few years later, after amassing a couple of grand worth of DRMed books, the reader failed - and this presented two problems.
The first was that a replacement e-ink ebook reader that would read DRMd Mobipocket files was now impossible to come across, EPUB having mostly won out in the non-Kindle market. The second was that all those DRMd books she "owned" were locked to a broken device ID.
The only solution was the same as in the parent comment - spend a decent chunk of time breaking the DRM and changing their format.
Ironically, this is an advantage of Kindle. The last time I checked, Kindle DRM was relatively easy to get rid of. I didn't research as exhaustively because I wasn't very interested, but it seemed like non-Kindle formats were harder to deal with.
The Kindle format actually is Mobipocket underneath, but with an algorithm layered on top that converts a Kindle serial number into a Mobipocket ID. Needless to say that algorithm has been leaked.
A few years later, after amassing a couple of grand worth of DRMed books, the reader failed - and this presented two problems.
The first was that a replacement e-ink ebook reader that would read DRMd Mobipocket files was now impossible to come across, EPUB having mostly won out in the non-Kindle market. The second was that all those DRMd books she "owned" were locked to a broken device ID.
The only solution was the same as in the parent comment - spend a decent chunk of time breaking the DRM and changing their format.