I agree. I don't know if the copyright still exists for Faulkner material.
Absalom, Absalom! was written in 1936, I'm pretty sure that copyright has expired, so I don't know why you can't get it for free in PDF somewhere, totally legally. Or
The Sound and the Fury.
Oh, Wait. Just Google the name of the book you want + PDF, voila. Particularly if it's vintage. I have a ton of totally free stuff like that, even via AMAZON.
I guess the process of making it e-reader-ready costs time and money so that's a lot of why ready-made e-reader formats still cost what they do, even for dead authors.