Question For the Week: Do Cheap and Free Books Devalue Books?

I was inspired to ask this by a short blog post I came across on ANewDomain, via Book2Book, a daily email from BookTrade.

It set me to wondering whether we, as writers, are our own worst enemies. And it was reinforced by another short piece I read a little while ago at Digital Book World that says research shows that only 60% of books downloaded are actually read.

Are we devaluing books by making them too cheap or even free? Do people, as a general rule, value those things they get free or a...