I don't want previews, though.
For $2.99 (I assume that's per book) I'll just go buy the books -- that's impulse-purchase money.
Yeah, I know Smashwords can do brutal things to books. There was quite a discussion going on about that on MR. For books without tables or pictures, however, authors seem to have come up with ways to make them come out about like what went in, which is all the readers generally care about. I have no clue what that way actually is, but I'm sure if you asked in the author section a couple of boards down, someone would explain it. I did indeed buy the Tim Myers books (actually, I ended up with 7 of them, which is a couple of weeks of reading) and he can make Smashwords behave, so there has to be a way to do it.
Like many people, I like to support MR authors when I can, and I've found some great books that way. It frustrates me horribly to see books I can't buy. (don't worry about the Sony store, by the way ... I don't even have their software installed; I don't buy DRM-locked ebooks)