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There was an article not too long ago about a pair who owned a used book store having a big book-burning. It wasn't a protest, they just had scads and scads of books in storage and no longer had room for them - they couldn't GIVE them away. I'm sure there are markets for them (my mum always bought used books - she read a lot and we couldn't afford new paperbacks... if "new" was the only option there'd have been much less reading going on), but I'm guessing most paperbacks wind up in boxes/storage or the recycle bin when people are done with them. I have to make a decision sometime soon regarding all of mine - I have more books than I know what to do with, boxes and boxes of them from my first 35 years of reading.
However, when it comes to what I'm willing to pay for books... if I really enjoyed a book but don't imagine I'll ever read it again, and probably won't get that nice nostalgic tingle one gets on seeing the spine of a well-loved book on one's shelf, I still like to have the option of giving it to a friend when I'm done. Basically, I treat ebooks as throw-away, like a magazine. The rights you have regarding them are far fewer, and I think the price should accordingly be much less. I'd like to see them just come up with "fair" pricing, whatever that is. Take the cost of a paperback, subtract the distribution costs for the paper (including buying unsold copies back from stores), subtract the cost of printing... then add the cost of coming up with a digital copy and the per-book distribution fee from your selling agency, and charge that.
Anyway, when I look at the books I've purchased from Connect, they tend to be business or one-time-read, throw-away books - ex: The Tipping Point, a couple of travelogues, and some mindless fiction. My only regrets so far have been "I Am America" (the printed version is SO much better) and "The World is Flat" (definitely one to fill with post-its and highlighting), and I ended up buying them twice for that reason. So far, eBooks have cost me MORE money overall than paper due to the double-purchases. I guess I'm in part paying for the convenience of having a small library with me when I travel, but I AM becoming more price-sensitive about ebooks because of the reasons mentioned above.
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