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It's not that books are fungible, it's that there are so many more books that I want to read than there are hours in the day, and for my actual reading time, there are hordes of books clamoring to be read. So I have to have some criteria for picking which books off my "want to buy" list I'll actually buy, and one of those criteria is price. If there are two books that are equally interesting to me (and it's rarely only two; more like twenty) I'll generally buy the cheapest. That leaves me with more money to ... buy other books with!
When practical, I also don't reward companies for doing things that are harmful to me. Sometimes I can't avoid it for necessities, but as much as we sometimes think otherwise, books are a luxury. So I don't buy (or download free samples of, or otherwise obtain) DRM-locked ebooks, not because I can't or won't strip the DRM, but because even though my wallet has a tiny vote, I'm voting with it nonetheless. People always talk about "well, if the market wanted X..." but we are the market. We're the ones who have to act, not some nebulous "them". I guess it's part of the "be the change you want to see" thing: if I say "DRM is bad" and then go right out and encourage the people who impose DRM, I'm talking the talk but not walking the walk, and it's the walk, not the talk, that matters when it comes to business. I find I have no shortage of books despite this. I'm still buying pbooks, too (bought three yesterday, all reference of some type), as well as adding DRM-free ebooks to the collection, and my TBR list is growing instead of shrinking.
Price matters in the same way a catchy cover matters: If two books are of otherwise equal interest, odds are I'll buy the one with the niftier cover. I have to decide somehow.
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