Amazon Kindle

Someone will need to have published them in some sort of ebook format in the first place, no?

No, it only requires a single person to either scan the book (through an OCR tool) or to type it in (it happens).

You need to remember, that you are buying content, not paper. I like buying good ideas. Paying incentives people to have them.

Yes, I know that [insert hungry media distributor here] cuts out a huge slice...

A lot of what I read are old books, long out of copyright with dead authors. Exactly what does the £7 Penguin version buy me?

I assumed when cliveo said he couldn't find them it was because they are not recently published.

That said, I'm unconcerned by piracy anyway. I actually buy a lot of Kindle books, and I'm pretty sure that people do break the DRM and then torrent those, but I pay for recent stuff (author incentive) and download old stuff (because why pay for bits when no author benefits and we already paid for the distribution).

Anyhow, it is out there. It happens.

As an aside, just finished a great book on my Kindle (purchased book)... Jonathan Trigell's "Genus". It's a dystopian look at London in less than a hundred years, and speculation on how science and genetic modifications might be used to further subjugate the masses whilst eradicating the less desirable elements.

Highly recommended.