Kalgoorlie, population 30,000, no longer has any store that sells books other than childrens books.
The last dedicated bookstore closed and now Target has closed it’s store and K Mart has decided to only sell Childrens Books.
Perth is the nearest city, 550 kms, 340 miles away.
Residents are left with the option of ordering books on line or accessing E Books.
Sad day when businesses shun the local population
People just aren’t buying books.I’ve got a lot of mine from the online Booktopia and that went out of business.It has supposed to have been bought by digiDirect but I’m not convinced enough to part with any of my money yet. 
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The last time I bought a book on line must be over 15 years ago.
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Must add that I get books now from my two Animal Charity Stores
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Where I live, population 21 000, there is no bookstore either.
There is Kmart but they only sell children’s books.
There is a small range of books i n the newsagent and second hand books in the Vinnie’s shop
There is also a library to borrow books.
I am converted to ebooks now so I just buy them online or borrow from e library.
Occasionally read a paper book if one at Vinnie’s catches my eye.
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When you buy an ebook, you download it and keep it forever?
You can remove the DRM easily so yes
DRM = Digital Rights Management.
it depends… I guess if you are a tech wizard like Bruce you can download it and remove the link to the vendor. But where do you store it - the cloud? When that system moves on or your memory stick fails it’s gone. Officially if you purchase some of this digital content online you think it’s yours forever but then if the company is taken over or decides to remove your rights to it, it’s gone.
I’ve been meaning to print out photos that mean a lot for this reason. I was stung by google play as I bought some movies and shows years ago and they have removed the purchase history for some of these in their platform move to you tube. It’s apparently a common problem for Google play customers. There is no-one to turn to to get your money or the product back. Buyer beware.
I prefer real books. Luckily in the UK we can still buy them in a shops and I heard paper books are regaining their popularity. I’ve never understood the appeal of reading a book on your phone or tablet. It gives me a headache.
If you think that is bad they did away with our local banks and building societies, at the moment have to go into the next town. Worst than that there is talk about even closing them down and having to travel some considerable distance to the next town along. Then incure parking charges for the privilage
USB HDD or USB thumb drive - so many cheap options these day. Plenty of programs that back up all your files. Just have more than one back up. You don’t have to be any sort of whiz to do that and the files are ridiculously small compared to a cheap, say even 32Gb thumb drive or for photos say a 4Tb USB HDD
Removing DRM is just point and shoot but it does have to be done on the same machine as the Adobe program. Once that is done the ebook can be stored and used anywhere - that alone is the best reason for removing the DRM in the first place. You paid for it why should you be restricted as to where you use it?
I have a couple of NASs, they are mainly used as a server for my TV however they do serve to backup all my computers but you don’t need anything other than simple USB devices to create your own personal “cloud”.
Yes there are plenty of devices, but once tech moves on they will be useless and all will be lost. I had an old windows 98 that I had files on but there was no way to transfer these to a USB because the tech to connect this to the newer windows versions was no longer available. I have CDs with photos which I no longer have a laptop or anything to play/view. You get to a point where transferring this information just becomes too tedious. But if you have a book on a shelf or photos in an album it’s so much easier and you can access them in a 100 years or more.
Well it stays on the device you download it on indefinitely.
I havent tried transferring any to another device.
Sad, indeed, but that’s often because the population had shunned businesses by ordering books online for too long a time.
Meanwhile, we can borrow just as many books and papers online due to the library network.