Hmmm... You ask an interesting question. (Leaving aside the concept that a novel that costs less than $5 is 'free' - which it *ISN'T*! :P ) Do I read as many full-length novels now as I did 20 years ago?
Let me think about this [Insert Jeopardy 'waiting for an answer' music here]... Okay. The answer to this is *MORE*! I used to consume about four or five per year back in the mid-80s. Now I consume about twelve times as many. Right about now I'm reading through Suzann Ledbetter's "Hannah Garvey" series and as soon as I'm done I'll be moving along to my spanking-new ebook versions of Steve Miller and Sharon Lee's Korval novels - courtesy of Baen's Books and Webscriptions, had to get the plug in as each set of five novels costs $20. And while I'm flat on my back this summer recovering from gastric bypass surgery, I fully expect to go through all of Carl Hiassen's books as well as re-read David Weber's "Empire From the Ashes" - which as everyone knows is actually the three novels "Mutineer's Moon", "The Armaggedon Inheritance" and "Heirs of Empire".
I think the major reason I read so little back then was because at the rate I read, I'd have had to pack around three or four paperback or hardcover novels and that wouldn't have left much room for work material. With my PDA I can stuff a dozen full-length novels into main memory and over a thousand more onto the Compact Flash card; give me sufficient battery life and I'm good to go for weeks! All in one pocket-sized device. And I don't know where you're getting the idea of 'nonmonetary' from. I shelled out $30 to Miller and Lee for the privilege of reading their new novel, "Fledgling" as they serialize it online. (What can I say? I get off on studying the gestation process of a novel.
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But I don't really *like* being tied to a weekly timeslot before I get my 'next fix' as one must with TV series. And while the 'rush' of a movie can sustain me for a half-hour or so, it fades rather fast. On the other hand, reading is something which gives me my 'fix' in dose sizes *I* control and I don't have to get all strung out waiting. Plus, (and I realize this is less true for series) the danged movies are far too 'choppy' for my tastes. Let's take a relatively unknown ebook, Carl Bussjaeger's "Net Assets". It is a fair-to-middling Libertarian, Near-Future SF piece and it might do well as a mini-series, but too much of the message would be lost in a straight movie adaptation or it would suffer from being too drawn out if one tried to turn it into a series.
There is *still* an insatiable demand for written entertainment - novels. Of course, one has to adapt to the times and seek rewards in a range of fiction genres. I think what we're seeing is the realization of authors that this is no longer a producers' market. Consumers *are* more demanding, and authors who limit themselves to one genre are not going to see the sales that ones who branch out will. Look at John Ringo with his "Paladin of Shadows" series - quite clearly NOT SF and nothing like his series based upon "A Hymn Before Battle".
Derek