Stephen King Releases First Installment of The Plant

Posted on July 24, 2000

Stephen King has made available for download on his website a short three part online book entitled The Plant. The Plant is set in the early 1980s and is about a vampire-like plant that takes over the offices of a publishing company. The story will be delivered in three parts. Part one is available now and part two will be made available on August 21st. The third and final installment will only be offered if King feels enough people have paid the $1 dollar per download fee. The story has been made available for download in Adobe PDF format for the Acrobat Reader from Adobe, Inc.

Amazon.com is assisting in collecting the money and payments can be made online by credit card or by mailing in a check or money order. Stephen King is looking for a 75% payment rate in order for him to publish the end of the story.

The release of The Plant is making major news headlines as King aims his scare tactics at publishers. As King explains on his website, "My friends, we have a chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare."

If King succeeds with this short story download it could inspire other well-known authors to engage in similar trials. King's first ebook release, Riding the Bullet, was a huge success with hundreds of thousands of downloads. However, many online retailers, including Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, gave the ebook away for free which made it difficult to determine how many of the people who downloaded the book would have actually purchased it. This should be a more clear test, especially since people are on the honor system to pay up.