robinturner | Passing books on

Here's an idea. Lots of people have lots of books. Quite a few of them now read books on their tablets, kindles or whatever, and would love the chance to declutter by having most of their libraries on their devices rather than on their shelves. I know books are nice things to have around, but I'd rather just keep the glossy hardbacks and the ones with antique or sentimental value and ditch a few hundred tatty paperbacks. Unfortunately, buying electronic copies of everything in your library can be prohibitivley expensive, and life is too short to scan them all. Here's where the good idea comes in. A charitably minded book retailer comes up with the following offer: give us your old books, and we will replace them with the equivalent e-books where they exist (or an e-book voucher where they don't, perhaps) and we'll donate the physical books to schools and libraries. E-books don't actually cost anything - the only loss in giving them away comes when the person receiving them free mught have spent money on them, and this is rarely applies to people who already own the book.