Ed Lynskey's Blog: Cracked Rearview Mirror - Posts Tagged "e-books"

Everybody has a preferred place to hang out when they're reading. This assumes you've got the leisure to read between all shopping, work, and just keeping together body and soul. As a kid, I liked to read books in a shady copse of pin oaks. Reading on a bus or auto that's in motion leaves me sick. On the other hand, reading in bed at night seems to claim a lot of my book time. I don't have an e-book reader (yet), so I can't comment if owning one makes it easier to read during the various slow times throughout the day. I see readers in the bistros and coffeehouses, but the outside noise distracts me.

My current reads is Stairway to an Empty Room by Dolores Hitchens (1907-73), a snappy, edgy tale written by one of the early female writers in the genre. Stairway was published in 1951 as a slim paperback by Popular Library, one of the B-List soft-cover houses.

Here's what I find interesting: it cost 50 cents whereas most paperbacks back then cost 25 cents. Why the discrepancy in the pricing? I don't know. Stairway appeared first as a hardcover which might have something to do with it.

Perhaps as puzzling are the different sale prices of new books. For this post, I'll focus on e-books. I published two books this year. The cozy mystery in Kindle costs $3.99. The noir in Kindle runs $4.99. I'd no input in determining those prices. The publisher does that. Actually, the cozy ran for 99 cents on the publisher's website for the first month.

There are scads of ebooks selling for 99 cents, and others are freebies given away. How all this variation shakes out, I'm not certain. But the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 9.1% can't be a good thing for anybody, including authors. And like everybody else, authors have to pay their bills, too.

Try this comparison. We recently went to see The Debt at the cinema. The cheapie show was $5.50. The regular show charged $10. So, a Kindle book is still cheaper than a ticket to the movies. Anyway, we liked the movie, so we made out okay there.

Happy reading to you and yours!

By Ed Lynskey
Twitter: @edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles
"Definitely recommend you take a fictional journey to Lake Charles."
Elizabeth A. White's Musings of an All Purpose Monkey