Can you buy used books to download?

I rarely buy a new book these days...get them off the market or from charity shops.

Presumably you can't buy used books for them digi reader gadgets. *sad face*

Maybe if they could be downloaded with coffee stains and bent pages?

Just a thought..........

Simple answer is no you cannot buy used books.

When you think about it, there is no such thing as a used book on an e-reader. Whenever you buy/download a book you have created a new copy, as the original still exists.

No used books but many free ones. These include thousands of old books that are out of copyright and also books from new authors - some of which are better than others!

You can't buy used ebooks yet.

Amazon recently launched a "lending library" for their Kindle devices in the US as part of their "Amazon Prime" service.

AP subscribers can borrow one book a month and keep it as long as they want. What Amazon does is purchase a copy of the book when someone wants to borrow it and then lends that copy to you. If you return the book they can then lend it out to someone else but if you don't return it for a while and someone else wants to borrow the same book they buy another copy.

What this means is that if 10,000 people borrow the same book at the same time Amazon has to purchase 10,000 copies of that book. If that book's popularity is short-lived Amazon could be left with several thousand copies of the book that they don't need the following month. I believe that these ex-library ebooks will eventually form the basis of a used ebook market on the Amazon site (and i believe it's this possibility that has the Authors Guild up in arms over Amazon's lending library and the claims of ebook price erosion).

I've only recently purchased a Kindle myself and haven't looked into it all that much yet but some libraries also lend ebooks. I looked into this when i was looking at the Kobo which is compatible with epubs, the Kindle isn't and something tells me that libraries only do epubs. It might be worth you having a look though, depending on which reader you have.

I frustrates me how expensive ebooks are when you are physically getting nothing, i've also been buying more second hand books to save money (and trees) but when an ebook costs more than the physical one, part of me would rather have an actual physical 'thing' to own!

The Essex library's format is not readable by a kindle (although there are work rounds), but the sony reader is ok and the kobo.
However, the main thing is to check the number of copies available and the waiting list. When I last tried, there was only one copy of a popular novel for the whole of essex, so not really much of a goer since the waiting list was double digit.

You are paying to read the author's intellectual property. That's whether you buy a paper book or an electronic one.

I don't imagine for one moment the intrinsic cost of a paperback is anything like the price charged for it.

It's a bit like saying a £20 note is just worth the paper it's printed on.

J.R.R Tolkeins body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His copyright goes marching on.....

That explains part of the cost but only part of it. You can remove all the production and delivery costs, how much does the author get on a paper book or an e book?

Also with paper books you can give the book away to a charity shop or even sell it on eBay, you get no such option with e books.

Selling an e book must be much more profitable than selling a paper book. I love e books but they are overpriced, what a fair price would be I don't know but it must be less than at present.

An ebook still has production costs associated with it. It has to be formatted and edited and it also costs money to store on the server. Then of course ebooks are subject to VAT.

Of course they do though for a big seller these costs are very small as a percentage of the total price (VAT excepted). They are more relevant went looking at a book that may only sell in the hundreds or low thousands, once you are into hundreds of thousands plus they become irrelevant.

I don't think they should be free or even a few pence but they should be very much cheaper than a paper copy. All the manufacturing, storage and delivery costs plus intermediates in this chain. How much of the cost of an £8 paperback do you think are due to formatting and editing?

I assume you use the same argument for music downloads to be much cheaper than CDs?

I would do yes though less so as a CD is cheaper to manufacture than a book. Having said that I have no idea how much music downloads cost as I have never downloaded any music.