For now, I'm going with Powell's Books:
I say "for now," because I may go with more than one, and because I'm dedicated to brutal honesty:
I'm buying a book right now from Powell's and it's taking awhile.
Setting up a customer account isn't very intuitive. It takes you to a login screen, with a username/password button. It has checkboxes for "I have an account" and "I'm a new customer," but if you pick "I'm a new customer" and click the "login" button, you get an error.
The trick is this: Check the "new customer" box, put your email address in the username field, and hit "enter." That will take you to account setup.
One of the things I'm looking at in auditioning booksellers is the eBook area, and Powell's has around 300,000 e-titles of which more than 17,000 are DRM-free PDF.
What's really cool is that they have a book I've been looking for in e-format (the first volume of Darcy Richardson's Others), which wasn't available from Amazon for Kindle), and in that DRM-free PDF format to boot!
What's uncool is that I bought it about half an hour ago and it's still marked "transaction pending" in my account on the Powell's site. Instant gratification is a big part of eBook purchasing, at least for me.
As a new "partner," I'm pleased to see that my purchase was instantly recorded for commission purposes. As a new customer ... well, I want my damn book. 51 minutes now. Download still not available. I'll update on that as it resolves. [Update: I was away from the computer for awhile, came back, and the book was available. The download went smoothly and the DRM-free PDF is quite nice. I'll probably order something else soon, to see if the delay was a one-time thing or "the usual."]
On the print side, I've purchased from Powell's a time or two in the past. The service has been quick, friendly, reliable and the books have arrived as advertised (they do new and used). So check them out, anyway.
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