According to NY Daily News:
King told the Wall Street Journal that he hopes to inspire fans to buy the print edition in bookstores and said he does not know when he will make the book available digitally.
“I have no plans for a digital version,” King said. “Maybe at some point, but in the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”Does this concern me? Nope. But it does seem unusual. One author who wanted us to get excited about ebooks now seems concerned about stores.
I really like a hard copy of a book. I like the way books smell, I like to feel the book in my hand. I'm surrounded by books -- both at work and home. For work, I still like opening a Bible commentary and using my highlighters as I find important passages to remember.
And, I still love book stores -- but I don't usually buy anything when I go in. See, what I do is walk around, smell the coffee, look at books and mentally note what books to go home and buy on Amazon. Do I feel guilty? NO!
So what's strange about King's move? That he -- who is so big on literacy -- would block out an entire vehicle because it's so popular. It seems that Kindle and other e-readers are younger, which is exactly the age group King is hoping to get excited about books. Moves like this could count him out among the younger audience I suspect he hopes to reach.
I'm actually somewhat happy that king has decided to stick with the old fashioned format. As he said himself, it's part of an homage to all those drugstore rack paperbacks, the kind they used to sell from the forties to, I guess as late as the seventies (talk about hanging in there).
ReplyDeleteWhat I like about the idea is the respect for the past it shows, and the implication that literature might know a thing or two about tradition.
Oh yeah, and the real reason I wrote this, Lilja's library has a partial episode list for Under the Dome up, now.
ChrisC
King can, and should, do what he feels like doing. However, it doesn't really make much sense (not to me, at least) for someone with as large an audience as his to do something that excludes people. I am a die-hard fan of print, but only because that's how I prefer to read things. It doesn't bother me that others prefer to read digitally; and it clearly doesn't bother King either, given that he's released several digital-only stories.
ReplyDeleteSo why bother with annoying the people who DO read digitally by making them have to choose between either not reading "Joyland" or reading it in a format they don't like as much? It's not going to sell all that many more print copies; it's not going to give physical stores a shot in the arm. All it's going to do is annoy people.
I love King, but he occasionally does things that seem misguided to me. This is one of them.
I really dont see the fuss with everybody saying that King is hypocrit about being so mad about digital, and not releasing this book as an ebook.
ReplyDeleteJOYLAND is an hommage to the old paperback exclusive, and it definitely MAKE SENSE to release JOYLAND in this way only!
Furthermore, he said that it MAY get released later on as an ebook. So i really am with King about keeping it, so far, as a paperback original... the same way that were those pulps.
Anyone who says King is being a hypocrite on the issue is simply ignorant. He's released numerous digital-only releases, so if anything, he's been a champion of the format.
DeleteThat said...
If he and the publisher were determined to make people pick up a paperback, why is there an audiobook version? The people who enjoy the novel that way damn sure aren't enjoying it the way people used to in the '40s. So why should their preferences be catered to whereas those of the people who prefer to e-read are not?
I'm just not sure it's that great an idea to turn readers away for the sake of a conceptual idea, especially one you didn't even commit to 100%.