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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Stephen King's e-book success proves that the new boss will be the same as the old.
Mar 28, 2000 | The news that Stephen King would release a story exclusively in digital form and exclusively via the Web rode the media mountain like an intermediate skier on a black-diamond trail -- tentatively at first, then with a little more confidence and, finally, hurtling out of control, crashing into unexpected territory. The trade press gave its imprimatur, and within a few days the story spread like a virus over Web and wire. Television and radio chugged behind.
For those who've watched digital content come into its own, the frenzy was nothing short of remarkable. Never before had a story about text and electronic media penetrated so deeply. Even the newbiest of online shoppers could find "Riding the Bullet" advertised on a half-dozen sites. Grandmothers heard about it on their transistor radios; kids, long a demographic stronghold for King, couldn't log on without seeing links. The network news pounded away on the story, morning TV producers fell all over themselves to interview King's publisher and local newscasts aired one breathless piece after another. Grudgingly, even the New York Times ran a review. Bemused and perhaps overwhelmed, the offline press affected a tone of awe. "It's a new book -- and you can't get it in bookstores," pronounced one anchor, sounding very much like the baritones in 1950s film shorts who predicted a future in which you wouldn't need ovens or refrigerators.
A story of King-like dimensions, it had all the right elements -- a futuristic sheen, a triumphant hero, a pending revolution.
If only it were true.
A glance at publishing history shows that the publication of "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book achieved little of technological or substantive consequence. Authors have been releasing electronic work without a print complement for years. Several have even done well, selling a few thousand copies with little overhead and no one to take a pound of flesh. As for the content itself, well, unless one presumes King's story is "better" than the work of David Saperstein, James Ridgeway and a host of others -- an endlessly debatable point -- then what made this different?
There was one possible distinction: This marked the first time a heavyweight of King's ilk had attempted an end run around traditional publishing. But even this sounded like the stuff press releases are made of. King had the support, financial and moral, of his conglomerate publisher, Simon & Schuster, and of behemoth booksellers like barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com as well. He isn't even the only heavyweight to distribute his book in an unusual way of late. John Grisham, perhaps the only writer in America who can hold his own with King in a battle of the brands, recently began offering his new novel as a magazine serial only. No book, no Web. Grisham didn't even shop the manuscript around, choosing, in effect, to self-publish it in the Oxford American, the little-known Southern literary magazine he funds. Needless to say, he had neither the cooperation nor the blessing of Doubleday, his publisher.
But the press mostly ignored Grisham. Don't send him a check just yet, but you have to feel a little sorry for the guy. Two bestselling authors toss coins into the fountain. One barely hears a ping; the other's splash reverberates as if in an echo chamber, a fact born out not only by ubiquitous press coverage but by the 500,000 Web surfers who downloaded "Riding the Bullet". (This despite the majority of Americans saying in polls that they wouldn't actually read a work of substantial length on current screens.)
The difference, of course, is that King chose a new distribution model while Grisham's has existed for centuries. And with newer models, Americans seem to take an all-or-nothing approach. We downplay developing technologies until they reach critical mass, then we do a 180. MP3? People will never give up CDs. Digital music? Who wants to listen to an album at their computer? Chuck D, the Artist and geeks go about their digital business amid the naysaying until something gives, and then, from seemingly out of nowhere, we're in the throes of revolution. E-books? "You can't take them to the beach or the bathroom," goes the complaint, along with, "Who wants to read on a screen?" -- and what about the much-rhapsodized sensuality of paper and ink? Not that this has stopped scores of authors from posting chapters of their books on Web sites or peddling their text as downloadable PDF files. We just hadn't noticed them. But then King steps in and suddenly consumer e-books are as inescapable as death and taxes.
