How much should I pay for eBooks?

[jersysman]

Answering the original question that was asked - as has been said before, you should pay whatever price you are willing to pay for the book. That price varies from person to person and that is the dilemma for those who set prices. For me, I am comfortable paying up to $6 for an ebook. I will very very occasionally go up to $9.99. But that is as far as I will go. So, with that in mind, I do a lot of looking for my books at Smashwords and the like.

The problem that i have with publishers is that they insist on pricing their backlist books as if they were new releases. There is no way that I would ever pay the prices that they are asking for books that are 10, 20, some even 50 years old (prices for some exceed $20)! That is just pure greed I believe.

[coinín]

Originally Posted by winsomnia

When I purchase from the large publishers, I assume I am getting a product that has been properly proofed and edited. I tell myself I'm paying more for quality-control, and I'm OK with that. Too often, I find that less-expensive ebooks have too many spelling and grammar errors for my liking.

So, part of the reason I'm willing to pay more is because I assume I'm getting a product that has been thoroughly tested (editing and proof-reading).

Not to mention things like a proper table of contents, properly formatted images, compatibility with the kepub-exclusive features (like dictionary) on the Kobo.
Nearly all of the cheaper, smaller-publisher books I've purchased have had no table of contents to speak of. That's not such a big deal for most books, but for someone like myself who reads a lot of short story collections, it's a bit of a pain in the posterior. I would've gladly paid an extra buck or two if it had meant that I could more easily choose which story I wanted to read at any given time via the table of contents.
None of those things are going to deter me from buying a cheap, independently published book that I want to read, but I do like having them and think quality is worth a slightly higher price.