If you had used strict, an error message would have pointed out that you typo'd $seach and probably meant $search in your last print statement.

Also, you might want to consider a different delimiter character than ":". The colon appears in many book titles, so what will happen when you eventually encounter one?

Here is another way to do it:

use strict;

my (@info, $found);
my $totalprice = 0;
print "\n\nAuthor to search for: ";
chomp (my $search = <STDIN>);
print "\n\n";
while (<DATA>){
   chomp $_;
   my ($title, $author, $genre, $price) = split ":";
   if (lc $search eq lc $author) {
      $totalprice += $price;
      push @info, $_;
      $found++;
   }
}
if ($found) {
   print "\n\nNumber of matching books by $search: ", $found, "\n\n";
   print pack('A40 A20 A7','Title','Genre', 'Price'),"\n";
   print '-' x 39, ' ', '-' x 19, ' ', '-' x 7, "\n";
   foreach (@info) {
      my ($title, $author, $genre, $price) = split ":";
      print pack("A40 A20 A7", $title, $genre, $price), "\n";
   }
   print "\n\tTotal price of matching book(s): $totalprice\n";
} else {
   print "\nNo matching books for author: $search\n\n";
}
__DATA__
Taliesin:Lawhead:Celtic Novel: 8.99
History of the 20th Century:Sage:History:27.99
The Twilight of Courage:Thoene:Historical Novel:15.99
Historical Perspectives:Lawhead:History:35.00
[download]

---

Results:

Author to search for: lawhead


Number of matching books by lawhead: 2

Title                                   Genre               Price
--------------------------------------- ------------------- -------
Taliesin                                Celtic Novel         8.99
Historical Perspectives                 History             35.00

        Total price of matching book(s): 43.99
[download]

--Jim