Slashdot Mirror

the purpose is to discredit ALL news, so people don't pay attention to actual facts.

https://stephenking.com/

Sure because Christians don't make any sense, right?

Stephen King is a Christian and he makes his living writing books that don't make any sense and are hard to follow, and thus since they are so badly written (as you point out Christians are poor writers who write badly written statements) they don't even make the New York Times bestsellers lists.

But in this case, Stephen King does in fact write good books and statements that make sense and are easy enough to understand that almost all of his books are best sellers.

I support civil and human rights of everyone and every protected group. I added in the line "even Atheists" to show that unlike what you accuse religious people of doing, I support every religion and even Atheist and non-religious people and treat them the same via equal rights. Thus I am not a bigot who treats one group differently from another.

Not all Atheists and non-Religious people agree with you either in your statements. I am glad to have met them who oppose your statements.

This guy had no life and was an English major! Worst... He took a horror literature class where they read and talked about Stephen King. That's what really set him off.

Alas, homicidal English majors don't have the same sex appeal as homicidal video game players.

Pet Sematary. I loved my cat, but that whole glowing-eyes-bad-temper thing is a definite turn-off.

Stephen King's novel is great, but this is one development that I'd prefer to keep strictly fiction.

According to the official fan site IT has been "A #1 New York Times bestseller", which means that Stephen King must have made some money from it.. And he was American.

From Stephen King's Official Site. Comander (sic) Trip? Where'd you find that one, kiddo?

Many authors and artists have published their work under a different name. One of the authors that I know of is Stephen King who has written five books under the name Richard Bachman. That the audience later found out that it was Stephen King is another matter.

Is he the GNAA member you mentioned ?

--
Adolf Hitroll

Stephen King's not dead you doofus.

Daniel

It's great that you've embraced the Web and have your own website. But it's even better that you have a weblog.

Weblogs, by their nature, are meant to be updated all the time. And while your articles and books are great there's something special when a celebrity such as yourself (and others, like the singer Moby and the actor Wil Wheaton), is willing to take on a project that really allows the fan to see you as one of us; as if we're holding a conversation.

Thus, do you recommend to your other high-profile friends, such as Rock Bottom Remainders band-mate Stephen King, to start a weblog instead of the rarely updated-type website?

Actually... he discovered that he made a bunch of money, more than $600,000. Not a ton for him, but still, quite a nice sum. He had other committments, but did promise to come back and finish the book one day.

Some of the issues he believes hurt books online just don't apply to software. Most people like reading books in book form, not PDF. Software doesn't have that issue. People already pay for a lot of software (maybe not the Slashdot crowd), and I don't think attention span is an issue with software. People just want something that works.

I started reading Stephen King's E-Book "the plant"
. I'm not exactly sure why but he took it out of the sun and let it dry up and die. King was distributing this short novel online for a buck a download. I paid for 2 installments (through Amazon) and now I'm stranded with no ending in sight.

As others have pointed out, this is a notorious troll. However, I'm a big Dark Tower fan too and didn't know about this until 2 weeks ago (maybe you haven't seen this either?) It's the prologue to his next Dark Tower book. Sounds like a really cool story too, although like the last one, it won't advance the main plot too much.

While I see your argument that Gramma Public gets online for free stuff, and I appreciate free stuff as much as the next guy, I disagree that paying your ISP entitles you to "free stuff". Your ISP is providing you with a SERVICE (access to the internet), not content. Think of it this way.. You pay a cover charge to get into a night club, does this entitle you to free drinks? No, the cover charge only provides you access to the club, and covers things like insurance on you while you're in the club, etc. You still have to pay for drinks because of costs in providing those drinks to you (alcohol, bartenders, etc).

You paid $40,000 for your brand new gas-guzzling SUV. Does this entitle you to shop at macy's for free? No, the SUV provides a service (getting you to macy's), you still have to pay for the product they provide.

People will not pay for web content because it HAS been free, and people do not like to pay for something that has been free up until now. This is why people will not pay for online music. Napster popped up and made it easy for Gramma Public to get music for free, so why would she pay for it now?

There IS something however that consumers ARE willing to pay for online. Porn. Why? Because quality porn has NEVER been free online. Yes, I know there are newsgroups, and there are so-called "free" porn sites, but the signal to noise ratio is so out of whack most people would rather pay a modest fee for no banner ads, pop-ups, or spam while looking at porn.

I agree that when it becomes simple for me to pay for online content, I'll do it. I bought three installments of stephen king's The Plant because a) I'm used to paying for stephen king's books anyway, and $1 per chapter is a bargain, and b) because it was easy for me to click Pay and go to amazon's site which already had my CC info on file and click Make Payment and be done with it.

Once people get a reasonably easy way to pay for content, and become sufficiently frustrated with pop-ups, spam, loss of privacy, low signal to noise ratio, etc, they'll be willing to pay for online content.

BTW, I don't see slashdot users EVER willing to pay for content. Why? Because we ARE the content. Why should we pay for what we provide?

Shayne

ebook buyers won't be too eager to have to buy books with insane reader software and rights management software hassles.
I totally agree. And I feel that this will be a much more tougher problem to solve than the traditional technical problems of display/connectivity/input/output. None of the online models proposed in the music industry have worked successfully so far, and I wonder when this market picks up, and in what way. The only guy who seems to make money out of selling online books is stephen king!

• warez
• porn
• mp3s
• divx movies
• book-warez
• keeping up with my favorite cartoons.

No it certainly wan't a dumb idea (the story wasn't so hot, but what else could he use for an experiment outside of his publishing contracts?).

If you go to his web site you can see the expense report for The Plant. He made a fairly nice profit (half a million) considering 1) it was a first-time experiment, 2) it was overpriced, 3) he botched up the mailing list that was supposed to announce new installments, so nobody knew to get the next installment, and 4) the story was a leftover.

He even wrote letters (used to be on his website someplace) to major publications that called it a "failure" saying that it actually wasn't a failure, he made half a million on a book that never even existed on paper! But of course the publishers declined to publish those letters. Wonder why?

I would definitely call it a successful first attempt. Imagine if he works out the wrinkles, gets some better marketing, and tries it with a better book (or in parallel with a regular paper book).

No it certainly wan't a dumb idea (the story wasn't so hot, but what else could he use for an experiment outside of his publishing contracts?).

If you go to his web site you can see the expense report for The Plant. He made a fairly nice profit (half a million) considering 1) it was a first-time experiment, 2) it was overpriced, 3) he botched up the mailing list that was supposed to announce new installments, so nobody knew to get the next installment, and 4) the story was a leftover.

He even wrote letters (used to be on his website someplace) to major publications that called it a "failure" saying that it actually wasn't a failure, he made half a million on a book that never even existed on paper! But of course the publishers declined to publish those letters. Wonder why?

I would definitely call it a successful first attempt. Imagine if he works out the wrinkles, gets some better marketing, and tries it with a better book (or in parallel with a regular paper book).

when was the last time you did something that made half a million dollars?
http://www.stephenking.com/PlantNumbers_010101.htm l

Honor systems have not yet worked - witness Stephen King's experiment last year

Check out the income/expense report at Stephen King's web page. He made $463,832.27. That's NET not gross. Sure that's peanuts for Stephen King but I'd say that's damn good for experiment #1. King tried to point this out to the publications that called it a failure, but they didn't publish his letters. Can you guess why?

Yeah this has nothing to do with copyright terms but I felt like pointing it out!

Amazon jumping into this space is clearly a direct attack on paypal's dominance in "what-passes-for-micropayments-nowadays", which is in turn a validation of what paypal is doing. The two biggest problems with the first generation of micropayment systems was

1. ease of use (not)
2. proprietary and patented "standards"

The open source community and the independant music scene needs to join forces. Here's a quote from a recent post to the Pho list:

"I don't know any hacker who doesn't think that musicians should get paid for their music. Some of my hacker friends compose music. I don't know any musicians that aren't excited by the subversive nature of the Internet and peered distribution mechanisms and, consequently, who don't respect hackers. Why don't we both work together, put down our swords, figure out how to put bread in each other's mouths (yes, even hackers are having a harder time than usual with that these days) and subvert the structure that has caused this unnatural schizm between us?"

Because it's not about money, it's about control. Culture is the most important commodity because it's the one that sells all the others, not only overtly through advertising, but implicitly, by establishing "social norms", subtle biases, and hidden assumptions. As the content and ads, news and entertainment blend and become one, the public is immersed in a bland and shallow "reality" in which they pretty much go along with anything.

The internet gives independant culture a chance, however slim, to reach a large audience without having to go through the mediation of "the industry" - and this is the greatest terror of partisans of the neo-feudal "new world order". For similar reasons, 'anonymous cash' micropayment systems have been "fumbled" by those who should have been developing and promoting standards - ie. governments and banks - because they see it - quite rightly - as potentially sewing the seeds of their own demise.

An open-source micropayment system could provide a way for fans to pay artists directly, with no middle man. Such a system would have to be established on a "web of trust" model, to avoid any possibility of control by dubious central "authorities". It would require the cooperation of many people, all over the world, to overcome the obvious chicken-and-egg problem, but the history of the net suggests that this may not be as unlikely as it appears. We propose to call this system a potlatch network, after the gift festivals of the northwest coast. Napster et al. is providing one half of a gift economy - we need to complete the circuit by providing a way for fans to support their favorite artists. The implicit contract is an informal version of Kelsey and Shneier's Street Performer Protocol, in which payments are effectively for future works - the carrot rather than the stick: "give us money and we'll release more art." Steven King's experiment was reported as a failure by the New York Times - but he made $600,000 dollars with virtually no expences. (read King's reply to the NYT.)

This not only can work, it is working. What Amazon's doing is an attempt to insinuate themselves into a central position as experiments in voluntary payments (micro- or otherwise) begin to mature. And we all know how much we can trust Amazon, right? We're interested in any insight or assistance in specing out this proposed network, comments welcome - jim at potlatch dot net or visit the url atop this msg for more info.

If I may be so bold as to exercise a little fair use here I find one thing King said to be telling.

If anything has discouraged me about the course of The Plant from July until December, it has been the almost total lack of discussion of the story. Let's get back to that and try to stay there.

Stephen King
12/04/00

Micropayments are an outgrowth of the push for creator's rights. Having full control over one's work is really what McCloud is asking for, isn't he? He wants to cut out the middleman and deliver artistic content over the web, but he's complaining that he doesn't make enough money doing it.

McCloud steps right on the main issue with the Napster reference. The value of something is tied directly to its availability. Just as I wouldn't join any Porn-o-the-Month clubs because I can get the crusty scrapings of those sites for free at their affiliates' sites, I seriously doubt that people will pay even miniscule amounts for what can be had for free. Why buy e-music when you can get it from Napster or Gnutella for free? Why pay for porn when sites like Persian Kitty list hundreds of free sites? Why pay a quarter to read something that I've already read?

The argument can be made, of course, that people do in fact sign up for porn site memberships, and it is perhaps the most profitable industry on the web. The response to this is that porn is PORN . It is an anomolous industry that thrives on personal privacy, whereas comic books or e-books (e.g. The Plant) are not things that people are reluctant to buy in person.

McCloud is dreaming if he thinks users will pay for content. Even a micropayment is a micro too much. I'll be glad to be proven wrong, though

Dancin Santa

Although the Authors Guild is signatory to this letter, I suspect that the whole scenario is similar to the current conflict between musicians and the RIAA on one side and consumers, MP3.com and Napster on the other. In that case, a few, very high profile, musicians have sided with the RIAA to try to eliminate fair use (e.g. My MP3.com) as well as unfair distribution (e.g., Napster) in one fell swoop. The less-well-known authors, or those who are not beholden to a single publishing company (e.g., Stephen King and Orson Scott Card) may very well have no objections to Amazon.com's completely legal and ethical desire to facilitate the transfer of physical copies of copyrighted works from person to person.

Let him know! There is a feedback page here.
I took a few minutes to tell him that his analogy between different print book formats and different electronic formats was bullshit, and to remind him that he's screwing up a precedent-setting experiment by being greedy. God knows if the comment will ever show up on the comments page, but at least somebody will read it. And if enough people express this (or similar) opinion, they might just use some of that money to buy a clue!

uhhh, if you go and look at the site, HERE you will see that the file(s) are avail for download in a WIDE varity of formats. A cursory glance says that PDF, HTML, ASCII, and a bunch of PDA formats are avail. for your viewing. If you can't figure out how to read an html file then, I dunno.

What You Promise

1. To pay for each installment of The Plant, and to pay each time you download it.

Nothing about the honor system, nothing about liking it. If you read the first part and didn't like it, don't read any more and don't pay, but you've already agreed to pay for the first part. It's as simple as that.

Remember, also, that people are willing to pay for that which they can get for free;
Look no further than Stephen Kings project, where he writes a part of a novel, publishes it on the Net for people to download, and lets them pay one dollar if they liked it.
If enough people pays, he'll publish the next part and so on. Apparently, people did pay enough although they could get it for free.

Remember, also, that people are willing to pay for that which they can get for free;
Look no further than Stephen Kings project, where he writes a part of a novel, publishes it on the Net for people to download, and lets them pay one dollar if they liked it.
If enough people pays, he'll publish the next part and so on. Apparently, people did pay enough although they could get it for free.

I agree with just about everything you said, I just want to put out a caution over the success of King's business model. I don't think that any conclusions can be drawn from the example.

1. It's Stephen King. We're talking about probably the most widely-read author since those guys penned the Old Testament. Because of the sheer number of people who read his books, if a small percentage of readers send in the money, he's still going to rake it in. It's incredibly more difficult for a smaller author to take the risk.
2. It's Stephen King. He's got tons of people who have been loyal readers for years and will happily plunk down money for his books without even knowing what they're about beforehand. It's a great position to be in, but it's not that common — for a debut author, it's going to be very hard (just as it is for dead-tree publishing, but the difference is that King's model doesn't account for a free library system where people can take a chance and check out a book for free).
3. I believe his rate for people paying for the downloads is around 80% (correct me if I'm wrong). That means one out of every five people isn't paying, which doesn't seem so hot to me. Plus, that number only accounts for the people who download the chapters from his site — the percentage would be even lower when you account for people who are getting the chapters elsewhere (this web page, for example).
4. King's book is entering into a very young eBook market. There really aren't all that many current books available to download, especially in comparison to all the music available for download. Right now, it's no big deal to pay a buck or three for the books that sound interesting, because there really aren't that many, so it's no big chunk out of your wallet. Look at one possible future a couple of years down the road when just about all books are available in an eBook (or PDF, or whatever) format. Now there are about 30 books that Joe Schmoe would love to check out, but that'll be a pretty pricey. Will he still play by the honor system and fork over the cash for all of them, or does he start to rationalize to himself that it's no big deal and that information wants to be free?

5. Again, I liked what you wrote, just wanted to point out that it's pretty hard to judge anything about the market from King's sales. I remember everyone in the eBook biz going ga-ga over how many people downloaded his short story a while back, but I didn't see what the big deal was. Show me an author doing respectable eBook sales (and revenue) who isn't Stephen King or Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, and then we'll talk.

   P.S. Full disclosure: I bought that short story he sold on the internet a while back, the first installment of The Plant, and I plan on buying the second installment (I just downloaded it today, and I'll be paying later whether I like it or not — i was actually surprised at how much I liked the first installment).

   P.P.S. If you go read the first installment of The Plant from the link I mentioned above, please do the right thing and go pay for it at www.stephenking.com.

Cheers,

As of July 31, there were 150,000 downloads of Stephen King's new work, of which 116,000 paid the $1 fee. He's made these $116,000 just because of his high reputation, but, he spent more than that just to market that book.

For a multi-million-seller like a platinum album or Harry Potter book, the "please donate a dollar" scheme just isn't going to work. On the other hand, if you look at the recent furor over the Harry Potter book, and all the pre-sales, and so forth, you can easily see that it would have been very easy to ask people to pay upfront, and very lucrative.

Also, I hate to say this, but most of the music being produced for free is worth every penny---i.e., it's just not that great. (Especially in the classical genres. The MP3 artists in the classical genres completely suck. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true.) At some point, certain artists are going to become more popular than the others, and are going to be allowed to demand more.

If your next song gets you $400,000, rather than $400, then I know you'll start thinking to yourself, "Hmm, now that I've got a reputation for quality...."

A lot of people confuse my opinion that "prepay is inevitable" with the fact that I think "prepay is good". I don't think anything is good or bad. I download free things all the time. I started using linux in '94, when 0.99 was made official, and my experience with the 'net goes back way before then. I know all about free. I was a regular user of Gutenberg even before there was such a thing as the Web; and more recently, you could say I made a major contribution to the HTTP logs of the free book section of ebooks.barnesandnoble.com,due to my clever use of curl. :-)

But I'm also a grown-up, and I know all about the world works, and how bills need to get paid. My opinion is that prepayment is inevitable, not that it's good or bad, and that once an artist becomes famous and/or popular, they will start thinking "do I devote myself to this full time, or not? Do I get paid for it, or not?", and at that time, they will decide to convert from a donation-only model to a prepayment model.

I think that only time will tell, but I'm pretty confident that prepayment will arrive, one day or another.

P.S. Microsoft killed Netscape because they are a zillion-dollar company, and can afford to put out IE as a "loss leader". Also, because they were able to develop IE5 while Netscape spent their money on plastic dinosaurs and Corporate Headquarters With Waterfalls. There are lots of little software companies, but there's only one M$, and it's the M$s of the world who will demand the prepayment.

People think that artists like Van Gogh were "starving artists" who never sold their art. That's pure baloney. Van Gogh was the son of a rich industrialist, and had a brother who supported him. The "starving artist" is a myth. There isn't a one on the planet, and there never was.

Finally, unlike Mozilla, the various forms of artwork like music, art and literature absolutely do not lend themselves to open-source collaborative development. You can't "fix a bug" in a Picasso or "add a feature" to a Nirvana tune. It still takes unique people with unique visions, and some of those visions are going to be worth more than others.

If you put up a form saying "Prepay a required $1 for the next release of Metallica when it comes out", or "Pay a volutary $1 for Anonymous Artist to download their new music", I think Metallica will get plenty of $1 payments, regardless of the extreme vocal opinions on the subject at places like slashdot.

But hey, let's not argue. Let's test the theory. We're all scientists, right? Let's see if we can get a high-profile artist to try it. I really think people will be surprised.
--
Orlando, Paladin of Charlemagne

While this may not end up being the "Business Model of the New Economy" (tm), it's a step in the right direction. Even Stephen King gets it and is trying something. Whether or not it's a virtual tip jar, or "download my book and send me a buck", some business model will emerge that will be fair to the consumer and to the artist/author.

1. a right, which can only belong to the author, over the first release of their work (not over subsequent copying &c) and to stop others using their creation for profit.

Can't make money? Bollucks. See the Street Performer Protocol and Stephen King making it happen

2. A short time-limited non-transferable patent where the application is made public for a real search for prior art (not half an hour in the patent office). A development period of, say, 12 months and then a limited revenue period to re-coup costs and, say, 20% profit.

After that it's public domain.

Cheers
James

Actually, many people mention this in the guestbook. I actually submitted a couple entries into the guestbook but they don't seem to show up. The first comment was about how the cost should be less than the paperback book. The second comment I made was that after he finishes the book, he should allow readers to pay the difference between the cost of the book and how much they've paid for on-line texts to get a physical copy of the book sent to them. It would be nice after finishing the book for a fan to pay the extra 5$ to get a hardback cover of the book (or $2 to get a paperback, or whatever the total price comes out to be). This would definitely give more incentive to pay for the on-line edition knowing that it's paying for part of the hardback copy.

Looking over the FAQ for this King story, I see that it's $1 a pop (a mere few thousand words each time) for the first three installments, and $2.50 an ep after that, up to seven or eight payments total. That's $13-15.50 US for an approximately 350 page novel (being generous with his wordcount estimates, since King has tended to try and make up for lack of creativity with verbosity in the past, much as I'm doing right now). Plus you have to read the thing in installments (knowing at any point the author might pull the plug), forgo the possession of a nice compact paperback to take on vacation with you, and either bear the costs of printing it yourself (figure $2-10 US more) or make it through an entire novel on Acrobat Reader (meaning you'll probably be buying new corrective lenses later ;).

I do like the concept of electronic distribution and micropayments, but what's "micro" about these? Seems like the reader is paying a lot, and King makes out like a bandit since he no longer has to pay a publisher. If the cost of advertising is the issue, then the experiment is already a failure, since only this precise sort of mediocre bestseller author could ever afford it (King is surely not hurting for cash), and ending the overpopularity of middle-of-the-road crap is supposed to be one of the main benefits ascribed to direct distribution.

Even if it were an author I liked and respected, I can't see why anyone would want to pay these rates. I think this one is just capitalising on the brief novelty most people see here.

Timothy wrote:
This still doesn't mean Jamie is wrong -- yet.

Jamie wrote:
I predict King's return rate will be something like 15%. Maybe it will go as much as twice as high, thanks to his deal with Amazon to let people use credit cards -- much more convenient.

Looks to me like Jamie *was* wrong. See Monday's news on Stephen King's site, in which he reports 76.38% payment. Now, 19.8% of the 116,200 that he counts as having paid have actually just promised to pay, but haven't actually paid. 80.2% of them paid via credit card. That means that at least 61.3% of downloads have been paid for, which is more than twice Jamie's most optimistic estimate.

King goes on. In response to the question "Are you go for Part 3 in September?", he replies, simply, "Yes."

Sorry, Jamie. :)

-Waldo
-------------------

Timothy wrote:
This still doesn't mean Jamie is wrong -- yet.

Jamie wrote:
I predict King's return rate will be something like 15%. Maybe it will go as much as twice as high, thanks to his deal with Amazon to let people use credit cards -- much more convenient.

Looks to me like Jamie *was* wrong. See Monday's news on Stephen King's site, in which he reports 76.38% payment. Now, 19.8% of the 116,200 that he counts as having paid have actually just promised to pay, but haven't actually paid. 80.2% of them paid via credit card. That means that at least 61.3% of downloads have been paid for, which is more than twice Jamie's most optimistic estimate.

King goes on. In response to the question "Are you go for Part 3 in September?", he replies, simply, "Yes."

Sorry, Jamie. :)

-Waldo
-------------------

I prefer a model like the "Street Performer Protocol" recently utilized by Stephen King. I'm also fond of voluntary contributions to artists and other creators. What I would not like to see is a huge bazaar where Joe Average gets 5 bucks for trading the latest Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling gets nothing for writing it.

--

One possible way for the music industry to make money off mp3s would be to sell them online similar to the way that Stephen King is trying to sell his new novel. They could give the option of downloading the file for free, or paying some small amount for it.

There are some problems with this method of distribution, but it could work. The best way to do this would be to release songs from a particular artist or album online one at a time, and to release the next only if the song before it makes some set amount of money. If it were clearly being abused and almost no one was paying for it, they could stop releasing them. People wouldn't have to pay for it, but they wouldn't continue being able to download more of their songs if they didn't.

With this system they would be able to release rare songs online, making them easier to get ahold of. It would also allow you to buy only the specific songs that you like, rather than buying an entire album that has only one or two that you like. It also cuts down on the cost of the physical materials used to make the CD.

If they did use a system like this, Napster could pose a tangible threat to their profits. They wouldn't be able to monitor whether the music that they spent money to produce was being downloaded without compensation.

Personally, I would prefer to pay money for a song I like rather than pirating it, but right now there's no way to do that with mp3s. And distributing music this way would be so much nicer than having to use files that have been encrypted to ensure that they were paid for, or some of the other methods I've heard about ensuring that the songs were paid for.

Sorry Steve, but Amazon == Evil. I simply do not do business with them (nor do many thousands of netizens) even if they are collecting the bux for you. In this regard, you blew it badly. Ah, well.

Keep cranking out the magic, my man! And watch out for them vans!

Stephen King Contact Page

"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

As an amateur typographer, I also can see that having professional design and typesetting would help a lot, even for a book to be downloaded as PDF, but this is secondary by a long shot to the services of the editor.

I have other friends who have gone the DIY route with vanity presses and it's clear that their work would have benefitted greatly from a good editor (as well as more polished design and typography).

Where my friends tell me publishers definitely overpromised and underdelivered was in promoting their books. (But don't all authors feel this way?)

In other areas, particularly nonfiction, authors such as Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) and Jonathan Haar (A Civil Action) were able to write their excellent books only because publishers took risks and fronted them significant advances which they used to spend several years researching and writing their books. It's hard to see how such books could have been written if the authors tried to go the Stephen King route. Possibly a venture capital financing scheme could be worked out, but does anyone think this would be less predatory on authors than existing publishers?

There may be room for improvement in the publishing business, but it's not clear to me how professional editing will fit into the King-style world. I have read the comments on stephenking.com and don't see how his model addresses the services a good publishing house offers to less polished writers than King.

Anyways, Slashdot should link to the download page only. By direct linking, people are missing out on the importance of the honor system that King has set up.

Joseph Elwell.

Hmm, putting a link to the download on /. will not help the $$ to downloads ratio King is looking for. I am a big King fan and I would like to see this novel finished. Please /., be kind to the King readers and remove the direct link and put up a link to the King Website.