It sounds like the author never heard of a VPS? Yes it's someone else's computer but you own the contents, can switch providers any time.
Personally no I would never host cloud connected stuff at home, but neither would I trust Dropbox or Kindle with my stuff. Although actually why ebooks need to be in the cloud at all I don't know - just buy somewhere that lets you download and keep them on your device/backup storage? If my eBook reader ever said I couldn't side load books I would hack it so fast..