Free and cheap books

We used to stop at a secondhand paperback bookstore near the Cape Cod Canal on rainy summer weekends and come away with bags of books. This store didn’t have any one-book bags. We filled up plain brown paper grocery bags, the same big bags used at the supermarket.

It was the ultimate buffet for a voracious teenaged reader, not quite all you can eat, but close. The state of the books ranged from never-read to battered, but they were all readable, as well as cheap and plentiful. Over time, I managed to hunt down every Nero Wolfe mystery missing from my collection. I don’t particularly want to be a teenager again, but I’m jealous of anyone who hasn’t already read all of Wolfe and Archie Goodwin’s adventures. I stuffed dozens of Sayers, Heyer and MacDonald paperbacks into the bags of books. Those bags of secondhand mysteries got me hooked, and I went on to buy hundreds more at full price.

That secondhand store is long gone, but I’m dipping into another smorgasbord of books, indie ebooks on Amazon. I don’t like every indie book I’ve grabbed during free promotions, any more than I like every book I’ve bought at full price from a traditional publisher, but some of the indies are terrific, and I’ll look for other work by the writers. I’ve never believed that libraries and secondhand sales hurt publishers or writers. I don’t believe inexpensive ebooks hurt them either. They get books into the hands of readers, and leave us wanting more.

My first indie mystery, Yankee Swat, is free today in a one-day promotion on Amazon. It’s a mystery, set in small town New England. Hope you’ll give it a try and enjoy it.