Buying new books in Australia is often very, very painful to ones wallet, anyway. The average MMPB that I can get is about 15-20 dollars, sometimes more, sometimes less. Nevermind if it's a bigger paperback or, god forbid, a hard cover (for a new hard cover novel, they can easily be $50 or more).
This is in my experience, of course, and I do live in a rural area. But it still is quite horrible. Mind you, in rural area's, at least, it's not unknown for new books, dvd's, etc, etc to "fall off the back of a truck". And this is with physical goods! You'd think they'd want to make ebooks easier.
