After three and a half months at $2.99, I’ve decided to lower the eBook price of my debut novel, MOST LIKELY. The price change, which is now at $0.99, is not a reflection of the quality of the novel, but an admission of where I am in my career as a writer; very few people know me yet. I need to make more friends who are readers and willing to give me and my work a try.

It reminds me of a story. When I was a kid, I was into comic books, big time. I knew a couple of other kids in my town who were, too. We sometimes traded comics; other times, we bought issues we wanted off each other.

Once, one of those friends had decided he wanted to buy a “rare, even back then” copy of “Spider-Man vs. Superman,” which back then was a whopping $2.50! That represented at least one week’s worth of comic books back in the mid-1970s. It was, at that time, a major investment.

So he was selling off some of his comics and showed me his collection and asked me if there were any I was interested in. Of course, there was. At the time, I was big into TOMB OF DRACULA, written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by Gene Colon. He had an issue I’d missed when it first came out a year or so earlier, and I’d never been able to find another copy.

“Look,” he told me, “the cover price is thirty-five cents, but this one’s hard to find, and I only need another fifty cents to get Spider-Man vs. Superman. So I’ll let you have it for fifty cents.”

That seemed reasonable to me, so I paid the slightly-inflated price. A few weeks later, I ran into the other friend in town who collected comic books. He was eager to show off to me his latest acquisition: a Tomb of Dracula issue about a year earlier than the one I’d bought. I had my own copy, so I wasn’t jealous. But I was curious where he’d found it. So I asked.

He’d picked it up from our mutual friend. (The three of us were about the only comic book geeks in our small town of 350, by the way.) So I asked how much he’d paid.

“A quarter,” he told me. An issue a year older than mine, for half the price? That didn’t seem right, so the next time I saw our mutual friend, I asked him why he’d charged me twice as much for a newer issue of the same comic.

“I had something you needed, and something I wanted,” he told me. “I needed fifty cents for Spider-Man vs. Superman, and you had fifty cents.”

He’d charged our other friend less, later on, because he’d already acquired Spider-Man vs. Superman.

Even though I understood his reasons, I couldn’t help feeling he’d overcharged me. Even if only by a quarter.

So, back to the present situation.

I still believe that $2.99 is a fair price for an eBook; but it’s a fair price for an eBook by an author with a following, a group of friends who love his work. That circle of people is, right now, very small for me. And recent history has shown that $0.99 is an appropriate price for a new author looking to make new friends; friends who read.

So, today, I initiated a price drop on MOST LIKELY. The new, lower price represents a two-thirds savings over the original list price, and should remove any barriers to trying the book out. With eight reviews on Amazon and four on BN.com, MOST LIKELY has been consistently well-reviewed, garnering mostly four-star and a few five-star reviews. Now, the new price makes it easier than ever to try out.

The new price is already live on Amazon, BN.com and Smashwords. So go ahead and try it out! I’m moving to this price in celebration of my 45th birthday in September and if people perk up and remain interested, I’ll probably keep it right there for the foreseeable future.

And remember, later in September, I’ll be releasing SHADA, the first installment in the EMBER COLE series of young adult paranormal suspense books. That’ll be only $0.99, as well.

Enjoy these low cost of entry introductions to my writing. Let me know what you think. I hope you’ll find both worthwhile, and that these books will form the beginning of a longstanding friendship.