The book was Priceless by Shannon Mayer, and it was indeed without a price – for the Kindle, at any rate. (It’s now $2.99 — not a bad price still.)
But it’s not just the name or the fact that it was free that lead to me calling it priceless. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
The story kept moving, but not too fast for me to get a glimpse at the characters. I saw depth in the characters, and I saw issues between the characters, but not all of either one. It made me want to read more of the series, to get to know the characters more.
The pacing was very good. It seemed too frenetic at the end, but then I saw that she was introducing another dark character that, I am guessing, will continue to pose problems down the line.
One of the keys to me was that it didn’t fall into a formula. I didn’t know what was coming next. It was full of surprises and complications.
I should note that Priceless really could have used another round of proofreading. It wasn’t too bad, but the proofreaders didn’t catch everything they should have.
Overall, the story reminded of the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. I liked that series a lot at first, but when the latest book, Skin Game, came out, I decided I was done, not only with the series, but with ebooks from major publishers.
I already felt like the series was falling into a formula. This is one of the big issues with books from the major publishers. It’s all about selling books –and why shouldn’t it be? They’re a big business. So they steer authors toward writing to formulas that sell.
The price of Skin Game put me over the edge and made me swear off ebooks by major publishers. $11.99 for an ebook? Are you kidding me? Some of the older books in the series run $7.99, but that’s still way too much in my opinion.
For instance, Immune, the book that follows Priceless as the second book in Shannon Mayer’s Rylie Adamson series, was 99 cents when I bought it, and now, like the rest of the series, costs $3.99. I’ve just dropped the price of the first book in my fantasy series to $3.99. The rest are $4.99. And the ebook version of my first science fiction/Western/paranormal/romance/hard-boiled-detective/humor book is $2.99.
Why? Because I want people to be able to afford to read. And I don’t know about you, but at $11.99 an ebook, I can’t afford to read many books at all. (In fact, for $11.97 you could buy three of my books.)
And you want to know what’s sad? I probably earn more from a $4.99 ebook than Jim Butcher gets from his publisher for an $11.99 ebook. So in my opinion, publishers are gouging readers and writers.
I’m not one of the writers they’re skimming from, and I won’t be overcharging readers. Nor will I be one of the readers that publishers are overcharging. I’ve bought books 2 and 3 in Shannon Mayer’s Rylee Adamson series, and tucked them away on my Kindle for an upcoming trip. I’ll let you know how they are.
Get Priceless
by Ian Fallis 
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