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One problem I'm seeing with the Agency 5 ebooks is that they are pricing the ebooks at parity with the mass market paperback cover price when one is available, but B&N and Amazon are discounting the MMPB so the ebook ends up 10%-20% more expensive than the MMPB. In the old days, when they priced their books at MMPB price, I could usually find a sale somewhere (usually Fictionwise) that would drop the price down to 15% - 50% off, but not anymore. I look at it and say to myself "Do I really want this book enough to pay more than I would a real, tangible book that I could resell when I'm done with it, especially if I didn't like it?" and so far, the answer is usually "No." Between paper and ebooks I already own, and stuff in the public domain, I probably have enough unread material to last me until I die. The publishers have not provided compelling reasons for me to pay a premium for a new work, or for the hideously overpriced "Classics backlist", like the Jack Higgins books with a $15 list price and maybe discounted to $10. I'd love to replace some of my older works in my collection with ebooks, but I'm surely not going to do so when then ebook costs several times what I paid for it originally.
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