Stephen King Says No to E-Book.
Don't expect to see an e-book edition any time soon of Stephen King's new novel, "Joyland," which will be published next month.
Mr. King, an e-book pioneer, held on to the novel's digital rights in hopes of spurring his fans to buy the print edition in bookstores. He said it is unclear when he will make the coming-of-age tale available digitally.
"I have no plans for a digital version," Mr. 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."
Mr. King's decision to support traditional book retailing comes at a time when many bookstores are struggling to compete with online retailers that sharply discount physical books and services that sell low-cost e-books. "Joyland," set in a North Carolina amusement park in 1973, will hit stores June 4.
It is unclear whether any other high-profile writers will follow Mr. King's example. Paul Ingram, the buyer for the Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa, said he's hoping they will. He lamented that browsing for books in stores has given way to people purchasing from computers and mobile devices.
"I'd just as soon not have people buy their books while typing a thank-you note," Mr. Ingram said. He said his store's traffic has "fallen off some" in recent years due in part to "the ease of getting books other places."
Mr. King's latest move to make "Joyland" only available as a physical book is essentially the reverse of what he did in 2000, when he became one of the country's first writers to make a new work available exclusively in a digital format. Then, CBS Corp.'s CBS +3.97% Simon & Schuster publishing arm issued Mr. King's 16,000-word ghost story "Riding the Bullet" as an e-book priced at $2.50.
Mr. King's effort was treated as a potential turning point for a small but growing digital-publishing industry. Digital books generated $3 billion in publisher revenue in 2012, up 44% over the prior year, according to a recent study by BookStats, which tracks data from nearly 1,500 publishers.
"Joyland" is being published by Hard Case Crime, an independent publisher of old and new crime fiction paperbacks that boast the lurid but entertaining cover art that characterized pulp novels in the 1940s and 1950s. "Joyland" features a terrorized woman in a dress with a Ferris wheel in the background.
Eight years ago, Hard Case issued Mr. King's novel "The Colorado Kid," which remains its best-selling title by a wide margin. "Part of the reason he publishes with us is to support our authors but I also think he enjoys the pulp presentation," said Charles Ardai, who owns Hard Case Crime.
"Joyland" is something of a side bet for Mr. King. He has another, bigger new novel, "Doctor Sleep," that will be published this fall by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. That work is a sequel to Mr. King's earlier novel "The Shining," published in 1977.
The Anchor Books paperback arm of Bertelsmann SE & Co.'s Knopf Doubleday Group, plans to issue two new editions of "The Shining" that will each include an excerpt from "Doctor Sleep," an unusual move given it is a rival of Scribner. The excerpt will also appear in the e-book edition of "The Shining" that goes on sale Aug. 27 with the paperbacks.
"We're interested in promoting 'The Shining' first and foremost, but we thought this represented an additional value for people thinking of reading 'The Shining' first," said Edward Kastenmeier, executive editor of Vintage and Anchor Books. "Any attention we can bring to either book will be good for both books."
A Scriber spokesman on Friday said that while it is still early, the publishing house will include a mention of "The Shining" in some of its ads for "Doctor Sleep."
