how can I delete books purchased in ibooks?

You can delete them off your iPad via the Edit button at the top right of the bookshelf in the iBooks app. You can't currently permanently delete any items from your purchase history, all you can do is hide them so that they are less visible : hiding and unhiding.

On my Macbbook version of iBooks (Mavericks) there is no edit button in top right corner....please give me my computer back. I just want to delete old files. Surely that is a reasonable decision that I am sufficiently competent to make. I paid for my Macbbook, so why does some programmer think they know what I want it to do better than me? If Apple doesn't want me to have control of my own computer, make me an offer and you can buy it back!

We are fellow users here on these user-to-user forums.

This thread is from February and is about iBooks on an iPad. If you want to delete an ibook, PDF or epub from the iBooks app on your Mac then select it and press the delete button on your keyboard and it will be deleted.

Thanks for your attempt to help, it seems that I am on the wrong page. I have a Macbook Pro, not an iPad. They must be totally different, as if I select an unwanted file in iBooks, and then press the "delete" key, I get a cure little beep, but the file remains. If I select the file and "Control-click" I get no option to delete. I can find no way to get rid of files I don't want. Would love some user-user tips that help me find work-arounds to the poor programming emanating from Apple.

Do the books have a cloud symbol on their top right corner ? If they do then they are only in the cloud and not on your Mac - you can turn off the showing of icloud books by untickinh the View > Show Purchases In Cloud menu option.

If they don't have the cloud then selecting and pressing the delete button deletes them for me, or control-clicking gives me a Delete option on the popup

Thankyou Emperor Penguin! I did get to delete the files that were only in the Cloud. I then signed in to the iCloud site to try to delete the books there, but they don't show at all. I don't know if they are using some of my precious iCloud 5GB or not.

I don't expect you to be able to answer this, but I want to note that I have other issues with iBooks. When I try to check what files are in the new iBooks Library folder, they have been renamed to some lengthy numerical / alphabetical code that has no resemblance to actual titles such as "Winnie the Pooh". Makes it awkward to check what has / has not been synced. And it appears iBooks will not sync my travel tickets / hotel bookings etc that were saved as .pdfs. Is it just me or has iBooks wrecked what seemed to be a functioning system for syncing using iTunes?

I haven't worked out where the books/PDFs are now stored, as unlike when they were in iTunes you can't do 'get-info' to see where they are.