Writing the book was the easy part.

Then came a small box marked PRICE, a blinking cursor, and a first-time author with no idea what a book is worth and no wish to get rich, only the quiet, aching hope that a stranger might decide it was worth paying for.

What follows is a comedy of errors in five prices. Ninety-nine cents, so cheap it reads as an apology. A grand, serious number that just looks greedy. A "clever" price of $23.02, chosen digit by digit in the sincere belief that strangeness is sophistication. A checkout that quietly buries a fair price under tax, postage, and a promo box you don't have the code for. And, at last, free, where the book is finally taken by hundreds and read by no one.

How to Price a Book So No One Buys It is a short, warm, gently funny confession about the one part of publishing nobody warns you about. It contains no pricing advice. It is, in fact, engineered to be useless as advice.

You already know how it ends. It's in the title. Come for the middle, for the five perfectly reasonable things a person tries on the way there, each one, at the time, the smartest idea anyone ever had.