Bowing to the Inevitable

I was writing the other day about how I had bowed to the inevitable and bought a Kindle last year. Now I know I was one of those people who vowed that he would never give in to the power of electronics, especially where books are concerned. The reasons for that are reasons I still agree with; that you can never replace the feel of holding a physical book, especially of the coffee-table variety. E-books will never even get close to that experience.

Where I have folded is over the storage issue. I brought back around ten books from Oregon this time, and I still have a good number over there. The main book I am reading right now is Paul Johnson's "History of the American People" which is a weighty tome at 1,000 pages. I bought the Kindle version for $10 and it is much more manageable and a quicker read. Kindles can store up to 1200 books so it makes sense to keep books on there, rather than invest in space-hogging book shelves. So runs my logic anyway.

One thought did occur to me, and that concerns what to do if you have loads of physical books but would like to get them transferred to Kindle etc. to save space. I have 50-60 books (most of them still in the USA) and it would be great if I had the e-versions instead. Thing is, I don't want to have to pay for them again in another format.

I was thinking it would be good if there were some way you could trade in the physical book for the corresponding e-version of it, as long as you could prove you owned the physical edition. Maybe there's an opportunity for some eager entrepreneur there, if such a system doesn't already exist, that is!