THE BOOK ON THE FUTURE

摘要

The publishers say that Stephen King can do this only because he's Stephen King," says the writer in question. "Well, that's crap." These are not words that publishers long to hear. For weeks now they've been furiously downplaying the implications of King's attempt to bring the era of e-books a little closer. Rescuing the unfinished epistolary novel "The Plant" from his personal slush pile and finishing it up chapter by chapter, King asks readers to voluntarily pay a buck for each encryption-free installment, easily downloadable from his Web site. Forget the book—it's the experiment itself that's loaded with suspense and horror. The suspense hinges on whether readers will pony up or sneak a free ride, and after the first chapter appeared on July 24 more than 150,000 sent King their Georges. (Chapter 2 appears this week.) The horror comes— at least to traditional publishers—because a mega-author is bypassing them and selling direct to readers.