I buy alot of ebooks, but i have always overspent on books
. I justify it to myself saying "A book lasts a lifetime, but a hamburger and shake are over in a few minutes".
If I really want to read the book, I will usually buy it, whether over $10 or not - especially if I've been waiting for the author's next book to come out. The e- book is usually less than the p-book other people are buying. If it is just is too expensive, I walk away, as i did in my p-book days.
I never download books 'just because' they are free - it would make it harder to keep track of the books I want to read. But if the book is older, i always check to see if it's in the public domain first. And I've discovered great new 'old' authors here in the MR library.
I do do something that I feel ethically conflicted over: I have a kobo and a kindle, but I prefer to read on the kindle. When I get a discount email from kobo, I will buy a book from them, strip the drm, and put it on my kindle. But I can't seem to figure out how to strip the kindle books,( I've read Alf many times). If I could, then I'd make sure to give both companies 50% of my business, because I value their service and products. I do buy kindle books often, because i feel it's only ethical to do so, but it's probably not 50/50..................the ethical issue for me isn't the stripping of drm, but rather consciously supporting businesses that I value.