I should point out, in defense of writers who might hesitate to make such an offer, that the majority of authors I know are not yet very ebook savvy, and probably do not even
have copies of their own ebooks that they could send to anyone. I just happen to have gotten involved in this while making some free promotional editions a while back, and I make sure that I have good ebooks of all my stuff, even if I have to make them myself.
Of all the ebook retailers that have my books, the only two that have made it possible for me to download copies of my books without actually buying them--even for quality checking--are Smashwords and Baen. (I don't even know that Baen does it routinely; I just happened to have the right email contact, and when I asked, I received.)
There are many things that are screwy about this business, and that's one of them. As far as I know, even the publishers don't get copies of their ebooks; if they want to check how they came out, they have to buy them.
I bought my one self-pubbed ebook currently in the Kindle store. But the price was low, and I used my associates referral link, so I could get most of the money back.
