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Money is so personal, more personal than sex or religion or politics. People shouldn't feel compelled to explain or defend how much they spend on ebooks.
I agreed with Asawi upthread that having a month of free books is appealing because it takes price out of consideration and books compete on merit alone. Unfortunately the inverse isn't true; paid books exclude some from the get-go and unless they're all priced the same, price is still a factor. Nor do paid books have a premium on quality; I'd even argue that free books are higher quality overall, as time culls the dross from public domain. As an aside, I thought Carmilla and Dr. Moreau excellent horror choices; I voted for both. Some of the unfree nominations seemed like dreck to me, but I hasten to add that's my opinion only.
When it comes to nominations, I'm pretty flexible. I borrow a lot of them from the plibrary. I'm lucky to have access to a university library and I still read pbooks. Others don't have a good library option or only read on their devices. It's up to the individual. There are a lot of factors that go into a decision, even, dare I say it, taste--which also is personal.
This discussion is making me a little sick. It's made explicit something that didn't need to be said and evidences a country club mentality that I find extremely unfortunate. I'd rather have twelve months of only free selections than to have people feel explicitly excluded because of money concerns. Before this can of worms was opened, people seemed to take a "win some, lose some" attitude and participate or not on that basis. Now lines have been drawn.
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