Bankrate: There's considerable debate in the publishing industry as to whether the $25 hard cover novel is too expensive. What's your take?

Fielding: It's still the best buy in town. What else can you buy that gives you so much satisfaction for so little money? But the price has taken the impulse aspect out of buying. I used to go into a bookstore and come out with 10 books, especially when paperbacks were $2.95. Now they're $12, so it stops you; you buy one where you would have bought six. So I think the industry has really changed and they have to do something about the price of books -- they are simply too expensive. People have the mind-set, "I'm only going to read it once and then what am I going to do with it?" Well, it's the same thing with food and any other form of entertainment. How many times do you go see a movie? I think we may be moving toward trade paperbacks, which is almost all they do in Europe. They have hard covers, but the bulk of books are in the large paperback format. I love a hard cover book; I love the size of them, and I love the feel of them.

I think the unfortunate part is that what really sells books is word of mouth, and the publishers and bookstores are no longer giving a book time to find its audience. By the time word of mouth is really meaningful, the book has already been pulled from the shelves. There's this emphasis on the bottom line; books are expected, almost like movies, to "open big." And books don't do that. They take a while to get going. People will buy them and they might not read them right away, but when they read them, they may like them. Then, they will tell a few friends and that's how it goes.

Bankrate: One question we're sure your fans often ask: Why don't you write sequels? Your female protagonists are so strong that surely you could reap millions by revisiting them a time or two.

Fielding: I'm tempted every so often. Sequels are very successful and they can be very entertaining when you have a cast of characters and you just inject them into a new situation in each book. In some ways, it's a little easier because you don't have to create this whole world and give birth to all these new people. But on the other hand, I would think it would have its own problems to keep it fresh, to keep it from getting stale and too familiar. I always find in my books that the action springs from the characters. If I already know who these people are in book after book, then really all I'm concentrating on is the plot and then solving the mystery. And that is really the least interesting part of my books for me. I'm not really that interested in who the bad guy is or what the mystery is that is being solved. I am much more interested in the characters and how they react to the situation.