Today November 3, 2009 on the Early Show Matt Lauer interviewed best selling mystery writer John Grisham about his new book..  And surprise it wasn't a novel.  It was his first collection of short stories.  Mr. Grisham said he had been working on this collection 27 years, ever since he decided to change careers from a small town lawyer to author.   These short stories were novel ideas that never got off the ground.  Because John Grisham said they were never meant to be novels, just short stories.

He said many of these fictional accounts were based on true events that happened to him when he worked as a small town attorney in Mississippi.

Matt also brought up Amazon's new policy off using this book as a loss leader.  A loss leader is priced below what it takes to market, produce, and distribute the book in hopes that it brings in more business to Amazon.  Amazon then attemps to use volume, and the fact that you will buy full price books from them to make up the money that they will loose on the price of his book, Ford County at $11.99.   According to John Grisham a book has to be priced about $25 for everyone to make some profit which inculdes the author, publisher, agent, distributer, and book seller.

Mr. Grisham mentioned that his contract with his publisher isn't contigent on the price of this book, so he won't loose any money, but new authors will face problems.  If the public begins to see the price of the book for $11.99 instead of $25 this devalues the work, and soon they will refuse to pay more than $11.99 for the book.

No publisher wants to loose money on a first time author especially for a loss leader devalued book, and this will create barriers for new talent to enter the market.

For order information from L Wagen's Bookstore click on the book below.  In Association with Amazon.

   Ford County by John Griisham  $11.99

For a Amazon book review click on the link below.