Hi stevebaz and welcome to MR.
Books don't have to be expensive . in fact they don't have to cost anything at all. I could happily spend the next few years reading the public domain books that members of Mobileread format shift, make look nice and upload here - if only I had time to do much leisure reading. Added to that there are independent authors and small publishers promoting their wares on various threads here. By the time you had got through those maybe the publishing industry will have got it's act together, (or maybe not
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