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