This project was delayed for weeks after my old computer died (motherboard failure) and I had trouble finding a replacement computer that would work with the hard drive from the old one (I couldn't afford to lose that hard drive because it contained all the programs that I use every day). Unfortunately I've used that drive for many years, so it's an old IDE drive (all the newer ones are either SATA or solid state). There are adapters sold for that purpose, but I tried all of the types I could find, and none of them worked properly. I finally resolved the problem by digging out an old "retired" computer in my office and swapping out the drives.
Back to the point of this post: As I have mentioned before, I intended to publish the book free in digital form, and at minimum printing cost for printed copies. But unfortunately Amazon is greedy and they will not allow a book to be published free on Kindle. Why? Because Amazon wants to make money on every book sale, I suppose. The minimum price allowed is 99 cents (USD). They have a way to offer books free to Amazon Prime members, during limited periods, but I want it to be free for everyone, at all times.
Another thing that chaps my hide is their pricing for printed books. This is a relatively small book, so I can buy this book direct from the printer for $2.31 each (plus shipping). But the lowest price I can set on Amazon is $3.85. At that price my royalty is zero. And I know damn well that Amazon can get a better price from the printer than I can, especially since they own the printer. So at $3.85 they are making $1.54 plus the profit made by their printer, while the author (me) makes zilch.



So the bottom line is, unfortunately it appears that $3.85 is the lowest price for the printed version, and even though I will make nothing, Amazon will probably make at least 50 % of that amount in profit.
Fortunately the digital version is another matter, because there are other digital booksellers besides Kindle. Amazon/Kindle regulations forbid any author from offering their books at a lower price at another bookseller. But they also have a price matching policy. So I have listed the book on Smashwords as free. Smashwords also makes the book available to the apple iStore, Barnes&Noble, Koby, Sony, Diesel, and some others. So hopefully by today the book should be available at all of those places, free of charge. It's available at Smashwords for sure, in whatever format your digital device of choice prefers. Here's a link:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/665808
Eventually someone will point out to Amazon/Kindle that the book is available at Barnes&Noble, or the istore, or whatever, priced free. Unless Amazon/Kindle figures out what I'm trying to do, they should then lower their Kindle price to free. Or they might just throw me out. But at any rate, the book is now available in digital form at Smashwords and presumably at various other digital booksellers, free of charge.
Amazon hates Smashwords because Smashwords allows authors to give books away free, so if someone reports that the book is free at Smashwords, Amazon will probably just ignore that. But they shouldn't ignore the other booksellers because they are trying to drive all of them out of business by undercutting their profits.
If you insist on buying books from Amazon/Kindle (or if you want a printed copy), then here are the links for the printed and Kindle copies at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Pancreatic-Cance ... B01LZ5E40J
https://www.amazon.com/Pancreatic-Cance ... 0985977248
If you want to download a free digital copy from Amazon though, you may have to wait a while to see if they are going to do a price match, because without a price match, the minimum price is $0.99.
The digital versions and the PDF version of the book all contain live links for navigation and for automatic loading of references. If you don't own a digital reading device but you want a free copy of the book, Smashwords also lists a PDF version that you can read on any computer or any other device that uses Adobe Reader or any other PDF interpreter to open PDF files. If you don't want to deal with any booksellers, I'll be happy to send you a PDF file or a digital copy of the book in whatever format you prefer, attached to an email. Just let me know. I would need to know what type of digital device you want to use, so that I can send a properly formatted file.
Thanks,
Tex