Stephen King Loves eBooks

Wall Street Journal:

Stephen King has filled HIS share of printed pages: Since "Carrie" was accepted for publication in the spring of 1973, he has written more than 40 books and countless short stories. His latest work, coming Nov. 9, is a collection of four stories titled "Full Dark, No Stars." In an author's afterword, Mr. King notes that he wrote one of them, "A Good Marriage," after reading a piece about Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer" (for "bind, torture and kill") who murdered 10 people in Kansas between 1974 and 1991. He wondered what would happen if a "wife suddenly found out about her husband's awful hobby."

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal

Comments

[JamezQ]

01:21 PM on 11/01/2010

I love my Kindle as much as I love my iPod and don't really want to collect CD's or Books anymore.

However, the iPad has several aps for comic book companies, and I would have to say it's not the same as having a comic book in my lap. So maybe I understand.

[Schweik]

12:50 PM on 11/01/2010

Real book is object with real monetary and emotional value. It can be lent, transferred, sold, given away. It's right of posession is nearly absolute.

Electronic books, often sold for outrageously high prices, are practically valueless set of data, possession of which is severely restricted, Doubt it? Read Kindle contract.
In adidtion, the chance of your data-reader becoming obsolete is 100%.

Floppy discs, anyone?

It is extremely risky to place one's intellectual property in such a unstable environment.

[ChelleAgain]

12:57 PM on 11/01/2010

Yes, after several years you probably have to replace your reader -- which is different from having to replace the books. I'm not sure I consider any book to be valueless. As to the price, it's up to the consumer to decide what's outrageous. If it's keeping you up at night that Amazon might suddenly decide to get rid of eBooks and zap them all from Kindles, which would not only destroy the company, but result in all sorts of class action fun, keep a copy of them all on your laptop or keep the wireless off on your Kindle.

[Schweik]

01:11 PM on 11/01/2010

"If it's keeping you up at night that Amazon might suddenly decide to get rid of eBooks"
Straw-man fallacy.
Perhaps you're too young to remember floppy disks.
I also find your faith in one corporation's concern for your intellectual well-being seriously misplaced.
It is always...Always hazardous to place too much of your intellectual property in possession of one company. Especially for those who find said content vitally important.

[TheWM]

12:37 PM on 11/01/2010

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/2010/11/e-readers.html

[ChelleAgain]

01:30 PM on 11/01/2010

Cool. :)

[sandystranger]

10:25 AM on 11/01/2010

I bought my son a Kindle for his birthday and he loves it because it's a gadget. I also bought him a huge hardback picture book about architecture which wouldn't work on a Kindle. I was reading a mystery last night on my ereader and felt like I had missed a plot point somewhere, but I didn't want to scroll back through the screens. If I can flip through physical pages I can spot what I missed before.

[ChelleAgain]

12:59 PM on 11/01/2010

Flipping back in a physical book is nice, I'll admit. I've learned to be a more alert reader with my Kindle, making better note of names, etc.

[faustushood]

11:24 PM on 10/31/2010

I like to collect signed or inscribed books and I don't see how that experience can be replicated with an e-book.

[ChelleAgain]

12:59 PM on 11/01/2010

No, I don't think it can which is why eReaders aren't right for everyone or every book.

[Getalifealready]

01:21 PM on 11/01/2010

ebooks are for throw away, pure entertainment books. If it is a book to add to my collection, a biography with pictures, cooked book, etc. I will buy the book but I love my Kindle. I have problems holding books open due to pain in my joints and Kindle is very easy to hold onto, I don't have to struggle to keep the book open. I see the value in both Kindle and real books. Surely there's room for both.

[ChelleAgain]

01:33 PM on 11/01/2010

Yes, I don't see where it's either/or. I buy print books with pretty pictures and beloved old out-of-print titles, and those go on the shelves with an accumulation of other print selections, and everything else goes to my Kindle and my Kindle goes anywhere I go.

[Ben Tripp]

04:10 PM on 10/31/2010

My first novel was released five days ago by Gallery Books (it's called "Rise Again," by the way -- end of sales pitch). It's a horror story, for the existence of which -- and a lot of sleepless nights -- I thank Stephen King. He's the one that got me thinking there was honor in writing what we want to write, not just what's considered dignified by the appointed arbiters of such things.

When my book came out, I naturally toddled over to Amazon and Barnes & Noble and the other booksellers that organize their titles by sales volume: the smaller the number, the better the rank. I watched my baby ascend the rankings for a while, but gave up when I realized how abstract it all is. Those numbers tell you more about how the competition is doing than anything else.

That's preamble. What struck me was the size of the ranking numbers. There are books ranked in the millions, which means there are millions of books selling better. We're in times when literacy is crumbing, budgets are tight, libraries are closing, and there are a myriad of other diversions being pushed on our attention to encourage us not to waste time reading silly old books. Yet there are several million titles on Amazon alone. Digital and old-school. And hundreds of thousands of new books are published each year.

I believe as long as people are moved to write, people will be moved to read. We're a long way

[Ben Tripp]

04:54 PM on 10/31/2010

"...from doom just yet," I meant to conclude. Brevity not the soul of my wit today.

[TheWM]

11:40 AM on 11/03/2010

Yes, the sales ranks on Amazon go into the millions. But I'm guessing that any number from around 500,000 on up means "one copy sold." 500,000 might mean "one copy sold five minutes ago," 1,000,000 might mean "one copy sold yesterday," 3,000,000 could mean "one copy sold a month ago" and so forth.

That's based on the sales ranks of some books I've bought from Amazon such as BiblioBazaar's reprint of an 1899 Teubner edition of Vitruvii De Architectura Libri Decem and Adamant Media Corporation's reprint of an 1860 edition of some Latin correspondance between Leibniz and Wolff, things like that. (Both purchased by me last summer, both currently with sales ranks between 5 and 6 million.) Over and over again, I've seen the sales ranks of such items jump from no sales rank in the mid-six figures and then sink into seven figures, with the pattern similar enough each to to lead me to suspect that my lone purchase was the only factor involved.

http://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/

[kareemachan]

03:07 PM on 10/31/2010

Well, I have to admit that books are like stamp collecting to me. I love books, I read voraciously, and I collect Arkham House editions!

[Fight4Freedom2008]

12:57 AM on 10/31/2010

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window.” --Stephen King

[Loffee]

02:06 PM on 10/31/2010

That is AWESOME!!! Explains some of my friends to the T.

[VanessaFas]

10:47 PM on 10/30/2010

I predict that soon books will be more valuable than anything else. Because it seems that less and less people know how to read past a sixth-grade level, and even fewer choose to read as a hobby, if at all. I am often shocked to find out that people I respect have no bookcases in their houses. None! My kids have bookcases, my husband an I had to build bookcases for all our books. How can this be the new normal? It is worse than the new standard of NOT teaching cursive in school.

[kareemachan]

03:06 PM on 10/31/2010

This unfortunately is nothing new. I remember probably 15 years ago when a friend visited in-laws in the mid-west. To her horror, the only books the relatives visited had were the Bible and RD condensed books. (And no, I'm not saying everybody in the mid-west is like this, but just that she had never seen anything like it).

[booklover25]

10:46 PM on 10/30/2010

Pretty sad that Stephen King, of all people, compares buying books to stamp collecting. He must be preparing his own foray into self-epublishing. I do have an ereader, but it's gathering dust. I will continue to buy books and go to bookstores--for me, reading a printed book is a pleasure. Reading an book on a little metal objectthe size of a Poptart? Not so much a pleasure...more like a chore....

[I AM AN EXIT]

12:43 AM on 10/31/2010

He was comparing them to stamps because he still wants them as objects. They are comfortable and cathartic, and I enjoy the smell of a new book, and the look of an old one. But if you could fit an entire library in one book, wouldn't you do both at the very least? I love that if I don't know what I want to read, I can carry hundreds around with me.

[Sherri Howard]

10:53 PM on 10/31/2010

I love books, always have but reading became less comfortable once I needed reading glasses- but ebooks also have text sizing and for me it makes reading enjoyable again.

[ChelleAgain]

01:05 PM on 11/01/2010

That's it, Sherri. I think of people prefer print and have the eyesight and dexterity that they shouldn't move on to an ereader. Why would they? (Although I think it's worth it to take one for a test drive.) There are a lot of people though who benefit from the fonts and the easy page turning and who have literally been given back the ability to read books again.

I can't imagine, or at least don't want to imagine, having that taken from me. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone with Burgess Meredith where there's an atomic war and his glasses break, rendering him unable to read. As a little girl it made me have one of those ugly cries. :)

[coastalcarla]

06:39 PM on 10/30/2010

I just finished Under the Dome - I love reading a really big, heavy, hard-back book. I look at a computer screen all day long Monday through Friday. I prefer to read books, instead of another lit up screen. But that's just me. I hope they don't stop printing books, just because the fad is to have them downloaded.

[ChelleAgain]

07:20 PM on 10/30/2010

Kindles don't have lit up screens. It's eInk technology and can't be back-lit. Like a print book, you need another light source.

I hope people don't stop making books by hand just because the fad is to use the printing press. Seriously, I don't see print books going away any time soon and if this is truly a fad then they certainly won't.

I'm reading a print book right now -- it happens -- that I wish my husband could read at the same time. If I had it on Kindle, we could do just that. I'd send it to his device as well. Also, at night I wish I could increase the font size, but that isn't happening. :)

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

03:31 PM on 10/30/2010

I cannot share with Huffposters how discouraging it is to teach freshman composition courses where students do not read their texts, even engaging essays about contemporary topics. My students here in Central California do not READ anything, period. When asked where they obtain their current news, whether from print media....magazines, newspapers....or electronic......Internet, television, radio, etc......only about ten percent access ANY of these sources.

Consequently, I have to budget class time for explaining what polysyllabic words mean, who is running for governor of our state, where is Afghanistan, etc. Folks, we are in a post-literate age, whether print or electronic. Stand by for easy manipulation of our younger citizens by the demagogues, who can assert any non-factoid and be content that it will be accepted...

[Militant Leftist]

11:06 PM on 10/30/2010

" Stand by for easy manipulation of our younger citizens by the demagogues, who can assert any non-factoid and be content that it will be accepted..."

Stand-by?? The time is already upon us, via the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, etc.

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

03:02 AM on 11/01/2010

Agreed, ML.....just look at the doofuses in my older generation who play dress-up in Revolutionary period costumes and carry placards with misspelled wording or, worse, ghastly, racist depictions of Obama.

I guess my point was that the younger folks out there are not exposed to ANY political rhetoric, for, most often, they are tethered to their cell phones, communicating by text messages such as U B there 2.... As a qualification, I encounter a small minority of intelligent, aware adults in the 18-25 range, but most are blissfully unaffected by political persuasion of any brand....

[ptrgamb]

03:29 PM on 10/30/2010

Unfortunately, one of the reasons many books are failing is because the people working there have every little knowledge of books. I have heard exchanges between customers and employees in which the employee ignorance of literature and even recent quality fiction is stunning.

[ChelleAgain]

07:23 PM on 10/30/2010

I've witness that. A couple years ago I was in a little book store and more than one person came in and asked questions of the women working there and they hadn't a clue. I can't recall the questions, but one of the (unknown) answers I recall was Roald Dahl.

[kareemachan]

12:28 PM on 11/01/2010

I'm not surprised. I worked for years at a large new/used bookstore, and for most of that time there were people who ran the various sections - they ordered the new books for it, knew the titles, and even more importantly (for a used bookstore) knew about older books. Their in-depth knowledge was amazing. Then the powers that be decided that everything should be done as a group to make it more "efficient", and bingo, there went the knowledge that made the store so unique.

[renocrapshooter]

01:10 AM on 10/30/2010

I'll be rich soon, as I am the owner of a rare and valuable "Inverted Carrie."

[JDM73]

11:24 PM on 10/29/2010

"I want books as objects." So do I. And that really sums it all up.