An ebook is a digital file.  It's a full-length novel, but it's not a book-book.  To me, print novels are different than digital files; a print novel, regardless of size, is an actual representation of a manuscript.  Pages, front and back cover, make up a solid, tangible book.  All the words within are the tale, the story, but they rest on sheets, bound together, maybe with a dust jacket.  All that costs money, the physical aspects used during construction.  Those aspects aren't free.

With an ebook, it's about the author's time, the worth of their intellect which created the tale, the yarn.  The story; what is the price of a story?  What is the price of a story indeed; is it calculated in imagination, butt-in-chair time?  I spend a lot of my time with my back end seated, and if my novels were priced on that alone, it would be a matter of affixing a per-hour rate.  More than minimum wage; I don't take my work for granted.  It is work, not easy, but certainly something I love.  How to put a price on that?  How to set a cost to doing something you love?

As a stay-at-home-mum I didn't receive a salary; I was compensated in the wonder of my children, their affections, quests for knowledge, their thirst for pleasure, their joy for life.  My novels are born of similar thrills, the desire to comprehend new situations, engaging my curiosities.  Also satisfying the need to write; I have no control over that.  I write because it's what I do.  

Perhaps only in the last hundred years have our societies become so focused on money.  Today everything is for sale.  Nothing is free, not lunch or an autograph; it seems even the simplest ideas have been slapped with a price tag.  Free means little anymore, holding no value.  If something is free, its worth is debased, its very existence questionable.  Why do, make, or proffer something if not to make money from it?

I have no control over Drop The Gauntlet and the print cost of The War On Emily Dickinson is dictated by Lulu.  With ebooks, I set the price, which after much deliberation, I have chosen as nothing.  I'm not doing this to make money.  I do this because no other course of action exists.  Subsequently, I cannot apply a dollar amount on that sort of blessing.  Sometimes it feels slightly cursed, writing a consuming endeavor.  But one I am grateful to perform, passing along stories from the depth of my soul.  No comparable fee expresses my joy at sharing these tales.  I hope you find a similar delight.

If nothing else, it only costs your time.