I worry about my digital library disappearing or my losing access to it as much as I worry about a fire, flood, burst pipes, gas main explosions, tornadoes, other natural disasters, theft/burglary, etc. causing my physical copies to disappear or causing me to lose access to them (i.e. not much at all since these are all things beyond my control no matter how much I want to believe I have control over them). The permanence of hardcopy is a fallacy we cling to to reassure us we will always have it, but life experience has revealed the lie behind that too many times for me to trust hardcopy more than digital in terms of permanence of access or ownership.

-M

At least a hard copy won't vanish or become damaged just sitting on the shelf.

If the shelf malfunctions it will...I have had several things get broken when a shelf just gave out or whatever was holding to the wall (or the drywall itself) gave out and the shelf came crashing down, CDs and DVD cases and disks broken, vinyl snapped, action figures broken, tpb dinged up, dustjackets torn, just form sitting on the shelf and something malfunctions with the storage equipment, no discernible cause except normal wear and tear from being in use by the shelf or the material it was attached to, no warning, just oops it just got damaged through no outside influence and with no reasonable way for me to have done something to prevent it. Shit happens to hard copies or digital. It's the risk of having stuff in any format. And digital never gets damaged because you don't have the right kind of lighting or climate control where you store or display the stuff the way hard copies can. There's legitimate risks either way and there are ways you can manage SOME of the risks either way, but neither is guaranteed safe and neither is as permanent as people think. You pick your poison or your set of risks in this case and hope for the best. It's all you can do (well except try to rationalize to yourself that the choice you made is the better one because of x, y or z, but that's all it is, rationalization to make you feel better about the choice you made).

-M

Video games are about the only thing I buy digital. And that's just because in life of my 360/Xbox1 Microsoft has had some insanely good deals that I just couldn't pass up over my superstition of digital. While in the last ten years I have only bought one game that was lost, I also still can play Deadpool (although God knows 20 seconds into the intro of the game I thought "why did I buy this?") because I got a physical copy of it. All digital copies were removed from all gaming platforms for some legal reasons.

But as comics and books go ... it's less the fear of loss than it is the disinterest in cold sterile screen of a computer of e-reader.

Music I am fairly indifferent to because I don't need to own most music. I am just happy to have access to it, whether that access be free or not.

I've put a lot of faith in it in the fact that the concept is hugely profitable for publishers, as well as Amazon / Comixology.

If it weren't, I'd be skeptical, but it's very, very profitable.

Also, Amazon wouldn't want to deal with the negative fallout, tarnishing their super-valuable brand, so I have faith in it.

Before Amazon bought Comixology I would've been a little more apprehensive, but I still bought quite a bit of stuff.

Like I said, except for the DC & Marvel content, and maybe Dark Horse, I can't remember, all of it is downloadable.

I’m the same, though more so with prose than comics. I much prefer reading on an e-reader now.

I have a mix of both digital and physical copies for all of my media -- comics, prose books, music, movies. Digital serves a useful purpose in portability and space saving. For stuff that I particularly enjoy and know that I'll come back to, I'll buy a physical copy. I'm in agreement with MRP -- I'm not convinced that the likelihood of losing your digital files is any more than losing your physical media due to fire, freak accident, theft, etc. At least with cloud-based services, if for some reason you lose files or lose access, there's some possibility of legal remedy, like a class-action lawsuit. If your basement floods, and your books are ruined, not much you can do (unless you had your collection insured).

At the end of the day, it's just stuff. Enjoy it while you have it, but nothing lasts forever, and you can't take it with you.