I hate to break it to you, Kevin, but I don't think Stephen King needs
to
advance his career. A few million
added or not added to his bank account isn't going to make a difference.
A
big reason King is able to take
advantage of the technology is because he is guaranteed big media play
for
this venture. An unknown isn't
going to easily get all the free publicity, worth millions itself,
so
people will know that their music or
book or whatever can be found on-line. By the way, if King's way is
such a
good idea, why didn't The Who use
the honor system for Blues to the Bush? Or at least charge a whole
lot less
money, since they supposedly
aren't using one of those big bad overcharging record companies to
get
their disc out to the public.<
Maybe the Who should release their next album on-line, one song at a time over the course of a year or so, charging $1.00 per song downloaded. Of course, if 78% of folks downloaded the first song and paid their buck, then they could post a new message saying that in future downloads, the songs would be longer, and the cost would be $2.50 per song. Think the fans would go for this? That's essentially what King's now saying, and I'm a mite pissed at him because of it. A total cost of $18 or so for the entire story is a bit much to pay for an e-book...not even a bound paperback, although at least you can print it out. However, I'm pretty sure, given King's workaholic nature, that he'll not only finish the story (which he began in 1981) but publish it conventionally in some fashion at a future date. But I digress.
BTW, as far as the Who overcharging goes, I think Pete is charging far too much for the LIFEHOUSE CHRONICLES. If he'd release it through Best Buy or something, at least we wouldn't have to pay the shipping cost; but even so, it's a lot of money to ask for 3 CD's of real music and 3 CD's of classical/classical Who music (yuck) and the radio play, which I sincerely doubt I'd listen to more than once, tops.
--Carolyn