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I love free or very cheap books. I often find them on amazon.com or at the used book store around the corner from home.
I wish I could say I will not pay more than X for a book, but the sad fact is I will. When one of my favorite author comes out with the latest in a series, I may hem and haw for a few days but will pay big money for a book I have every reason to believe will satisfy. "If a movie in a theater costs me $10 and up for two hours of entertainment," my thought process goes, "then surely a book that will take me several days to finish is worth $20-30!" If my personal demand for material is high, the market is wise to supply at a high price.
Having said that, those who don't have such a claim on my loyalty need to think of a few things. First, if two books appeal to me equally, the cheaper one gets bought. So either lower your price or market your book such that I hear about it but not the other. Second, if two books are priced the same and appeal to me equally, I'm going to want to sample the text to see how it fares in terms of misspellings, typos, grammar, etc.; provide a suitable sample to show off, and don't provide one if you have something to hide. Third, with Kindle books I've been burned by publishers that don't take the time to format their book properly (e.g. active links from TOC, page numbers, jump ahead a chapter, etc.). A tip-off in this regard is a "sample" that cuts off shortly after the copyright page. HINT: I'm reading the sample to see if I'll like the book, not to read your dedication and table of contents.
tl;dr - I may pay top-dollar for "a" book, but the question you want to ask is what will I pay for your book?
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