Hi I've bought the D&D books including the player's hand book years ago. I'm wondering how do you add these books to the D&D Beyond character? Is it even possible or do I have to rebuy the books again? 

There is no way to redeem physical books on DDB.

You can use homebrew tools to add character options from your physical books to use on DDB. Or You can buy the individual character option instead of the whole book (roughly 2$ each, or a bit over 1$ each when bought as a pack. Any purchases made from a book reduces the cost of the book if you choose to buy it later).

You have any links to download any of the HB options. It feels weird, I already spent money on the books. Now I have to spend more money just to access content I already have access to? That doesn't sit right with me. 2 dollars each per each background?! This D&D seems like an overpriced character creator, no offense.

You can't publish licensed material, so you will have to make the homebrew yourself (it is free though).

The character sheets are free to use. The homebrew tools are free to use. The only things that cost money are the things WotC requires to cost money, and the Subs which support DDB and only need 1 per play group.

D&D Beyond isn't owned or operated by Wizards, they need to make money just like any other gaming store. If you buy a CD from FYE, iTunes doesn't give you the songs for free. And Audible doesn't give you free audio books for a hardcover you bought at Barnes and Noble.

Despite owning the big 3 in hardcover (PHB, DMG, MM), I haven't opened them since I bought them on D&D Beyond. Having the tooltip links for conditions, monsters, spells, etc is a huge time saver. Plus the hyperlinked table of contents and a search function means I can find anything a lot easier.

Browsing spells is great since you can filter the lists by level, rather than have to flip back and forth in the PHB to the class lists.

Or you can make them free by hand. Look I understand the need to make money, but the current model just screws over the old players who already have those books. Not to mention there are other apps that can make these creators just as fast and are even cheaper, but they’re being suppressed by Wizards. To be blunt and honest, it’s just greedy and excessive. Two dollars per background, two or three dollars per race. Restrictions to on spells and subclasses until you pay to get behind this wall for the content. These are basically anti-consumer practices that is literally destroying the video game industry. In the long run, I fear practices like these will only breed resentment, and consumer fatigue, that will eventually make customers leave the brand all together. I really don’t want this for the D&D brand, I don’t want to support this type of model. In my opinion, it’s wrong.

Also, I’m not going to pay for the same content twice, that’s crazy. It doesn’t benefit me to do that. Either way, I will not be using D&D Beyond, especially if they’re using practices like these. So no thank you, I’ll enjoy my hard copy rather than buying the same song on this D&D iTunes. I’ll spend the extra time to make the characters by hand and that’s my choice. In addition, it doesn’t take that long to look up a spell, rule, or page, that’s why we have sticky notes. Two seconds. Anyway thank you for taking the the time to answer my question. I’ve learned that D&D beyond is definitely not for me. 

I haven't checked any recent books myself so I do not know if this is true or not. But supposedly books are now being put out with a digital code in them that can be used to get the books on your tablet/computer device (and thus I assume in D&D Beyond too.)

Unfortunately, this would still mean that books that were purchased before such a thing was implemented cannot qualify. I do not see any way that a website would be able to verify the purchase or ownership of a book bought pre-code.

Where did you hear that books were being printed with codes? I can't find anything about that, and neither the DDB team nor WotC have said they were going this direction.

Quote from Stormknight >>

To my knowledge, there has been one such product - the Beadle and Grimm Platinum Edition box set of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, which came with a code to unlock the digital version on D&D Beyond.

https://twitter.com/dndbeyond/status/1025161641242107905

 However that "book" retails for around $500 and they have negotiated the codes directly with DDB.  And they appear to be sold out.

Their next product is a much more reasonable $175 - no mention on the pre-order page if it will include a code for the DDB version though

Ah, like I said, I hadn't checked on it myself. I was just "informed" of it by the same people who introduced me to D&D Beyond.

And since DDB had a "Redeem a Key" feature under the Marketplace, I assumed that it was for such a purpose.

My apologies if I just spread some mis-information.

I'm new to hole D&D world and things just learning to play and picked up a hardback copy of the players handbook. The first campaign I joined I was told would be using D&D Beyond. Was invited to a campaign made my character was nice and easy to use. Thankfully due to other members of the campaigns and there subscription I got access to the digital copy. Now I'm joining a new game but do not have access to much at all with this new character. So I went to your store to check to see how much the books are. And the digital price is higher than what I paid for my paperback copy. So it is hard from a new player and new customer point of view that I should pay more for digital over paperback. Can anyone from D&D Beyond let me in on why this is.

I'm just a user, not an accountant from DDB or anything, but it's more expensive because you're paying for the site's extra integrated features--the character builder, encounters, homebrew, etc.  Not only are these extra features in addition to the books themselves, they have to be actively maintained.

The good news is that you don't have to buy the entire book all over again: if all you want is to play as an Autognome using DDB's features, for example, you can pay two bucks and you're golden.  If you buy all six races from Spelljammer together it's nine bucks.  It even discounts the full price of the book if you decide to buy it later.

You can also buy just the compendium content, which is the book itself without the extra website/app features, and it's more in line with what you'd expect cost-wise.

...Honestly, DDB could stand to better advertise the a la carte pricing options, it's very easy to miss that it's even an option since you have to click through to each book's page and then scroll down a bunch to see them.

Quote from BloodRidden >>

I'm new to hole D&D world and things just learning to play and picked up a hardback copy of the players handbook. The first campaign I joined I was told would be using D&D Beyond. Was invited to a campaign made my character was nice and easy to use. Thankfully due to other members of the campaigns and there subscription I got access to the digital copy. Now I'm joining a new game but do not have access to much at all with this new character. So I went to your store to check to see how much the books are. And the digital price is higher than what I paid for my paperback copy. So it is hard from a new player and new customer point of view that I should pay more for digital over paperback. Can anyone from D&D Beyond let me in on why this is.

 
If you paid less than thirty dollars for a 5e Player's Handbook, you didn't get it from an official source.  If you have a 'Paperback' PHB, i.e. a softback part, that's not a Wizards-printed PHB and is almost certainly a bootleg book.  Wizards doesn't do softback books (even though they bloody well should).  Whether that matters to you is up to you, but DDB can't be held answerable to the pricing practices of bootleggers.

From what I can tell, the MSRP on the Player's Handbook 5e is $49.95.  Sellers can sell the book for whatever they want, but the MSRP is still basically $50.  On D&D Beyond the price is $30.  So it's actually $20 dollars cheaper than the MSRP.  Plus you get access to the digital toolset.  The books don't automatically add your scores into your skills and add proficiency, or allow you to see what a spell does without having to flip to the actual spell description.  So you are getting all the content in the book, as well as the use of their automated system, for less than the MSRP of the book itself.  Pretty good deal, eh?

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

 
If you paid less than thirty dollars for a 5e Player's Handbook, you didn't get it from an official source. 

Many online retailers like Amazon and Target sell the PHB for less than $25 (it was $22 last I checked). They also sell every D&D book for much less than MSRP. Many game stores do too, but most don't because that want to make money. The markup on books is insane (well, this goes for most things lol).

There are two numbers there on those sites that are officially licensed to sell the books—PHB price below. Both are important to this conversation.

EDIT: Source: AmazonSmile 12/9/2022 (or here in the USA 9/12/2022). Another consideration is the timing. There's reason to entice sales with what's been announced. One must take all factors into consideration and not just the ones that will support our opinions.

Not sure what you’re getting at but D&D 5e books have always been heavily discounted at Amazon and Target. I would know, those retailers are where I’ve bought all my books over the years. My point was that you said if you paid so little for a book then it came from an unofficial source, which is not always correct. 

While true that you can get the books cheaper on Amazon, the post in question also mentioned a paperback copy, which I don’t believe WotC does, which Yurei was also responding to. 

The book I have is a hard back book, and I bought mine in store not online and I still payed less than the $30 you want for your digital copy. So before you automatically assume that I got a paperback bootleg copy instead of the hard back version I did not. I payed $20 for my legal hard back copy of the handbook. So you asking $30 for your digital copy is still a little much in my opinion. I do see where the confusion was though cause I said paperback later in my post. But I did start out the post saying hard back so I can get the confusion and wanted to note this after going back reading comments and my original post.