Stephen King’s Hollow Promise
Stephen King announced not long ago that his next book would be available only in print to try and drum up sales of print books. It was a bold and ambitious idea. King has a huge fan base, and if they are forced to buy his book in physical form, then people might be reintroduced to the experience of reading a real book, and hopefully do it more often - which will let books and bookstores live on.
And yet the promise ended up being hollow. Not because he didn’t follow through with it. No, because the book that he released was Joyland: a hard-boiled crime book, published by Hard Case Crime, harkening back to the old pulp days. Not his traditional fare of horror or even fantasy. Not a big, illustrious title. A little paperback pulp crime book.
Now I have no doubt this book will be well-received and is written well. Sales have been alright. But it’s not true Stephen King. Which means it’s not going to do what King said he wanted to do, which was to scare up sales of physical books.
When this move was first announced, I foolishly thought that Doctor Sleep might be the book he was referring to. What a coup that would have been for booksellers and fans of physical books. The sequel to The Shining, available only in print?
But too much money is at stake to do something like that, I’m sure. Die-hard Stephen King fans will surely buy Joyland just to have it, but those aren’t the people we need to be buying physical books again. We need the masses to be interested in books again, even for a fleeting moment. Look at records. After years of irrelevance, records have returned from the brink to be an expanding business. New bands release records, and people gladly buy them up. You get gorgeous artwork, amazing sound, a unique experience, and often even free downloads or CDs.
What booksellers need is an established author who is willing to stand behind print and make a bold move. Introduce people back to the medium, even for one book, and they might stay. And then the ball starts rolling.
