$2.99 Paperbacks, Get 'em while they're HOT!

Publisher's Weekly (subscription required, sorry) has a short blurb on Penguin Group's plan to sell $2.99 paperbacks. Holy Frijoles, $2.99? What is that going to be? Well, according to the article:

The program will feature short stories, 92–128 pages each, by Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Jayne Castle, Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Maggie Shayne that have been culled from anthologies. Kaye hopes the low price will entice people to sample new authors, and is counting on customers buying more than one title at a time.

Would I pay $2.99 for a short story from an anthology? I don't know. I'm not a huge anthology dilettante, but I suppose if I knew a story was good, I might. I'll be curious to see if this is the start of another something new. I have definitely picked up books that were marked at a lower price point. When Dell offered one of Karen Marie Moning's Highlander books at a $3.99 price point, I picked one up. I bought The Curious Incident of the Dog In The NightTime because the audio CD was offered at special promotion of $14.99. I don't think I'd buy a book because it's cheap (i.e. I'm usually the first to pass by the remaindered table), but if there's a book that I've been wanting to read, a lower price can put me over the edge. What about you? Does price affect your buying decisions? And an offshoot of this discussion, do you ever give up on an author if they move to hardback? I usually give a hardback author two chances (Kathleen's Two Strikes and Your Out Policy). If they don't keep me entertained, no more hardbacks again.