[Sissinghurst]

I have owned 5 ereaders but 4 of those were second hand. On the 3 second-hand ones I used (one only just acquired) I've finished a total of about 180 books if I've put everything I read into the read collections. There are a lot of others I've read in part. The (new) Nook was very slow and I only read maybe 20 books on it - though I gave it to someone who was going to root it and reuse it, as rooted Nooks seem to have quite a few uses, so it also didn't go to waste. I will be selling on one of the Kindles soon so it will get a third user. I only replaced it because it was low capacity, only 2GB and it was getting slow because it was nearly full. There wasn't a higher capacity second hand one around to buy at the time I got that one 2 or 3 years ago.

I've also read some books on a tablet which I'd have for other uses anyway. Maybe 20-30.

I always used to buy a tremendous quantity of books I didn't get round to reading properly for a long time, though, so that 180 isn't properly representative of paper books not purchased. In environmental impact, it's the manufacture (and then purchase) of the new item that counts, not whether, in the case of something like a paper book that needs no power to operate, the consumer uses it.

The returns system in publishing, where many bookstores send unsold copies back to publishers for pulping, and all the transport involved in that, is another factor to take into account for paper books. They don't just keep books until they sell them. They get in more copies than they will sell of some new titles and this makes appealing displays.