HISTORY: King online book HUGE HIT

"It could literally change the way people regard reading.

"Stephen King collected $450,000 for "Riding the Bullet," a 66-page story that readers can download from various Web sites.

The author told Time magazine his experiment with putting the story on the Internet has been so successful he is considering put a full-length book online. "I would love to do something like that," said King, the author of 30 best sellers.

"It could literally change the way people regard reading." King's ghost story was put out exclusively over the Web. After giving it away for free for the first 24 hours, readers had to pay $2.50 to download it. As of Sunday, more than 500,000 people had downloaded the piece, and reports said that the onslaught of King fans early in the release tied up a few sites.

MeMail: Cyber Briefs

Cyberbriefs Keep yourself on the bleeding edge of the Internet industry. MeMail.com's Cyberbriefs is filled with breaking news about fast companies, new products and services, e-commerce, e-tailing, metrics, hot sites and more.

mailto:subscribe-cyberbriefs@send.memail.com

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), March 21, 2000

Answers

more than 500,000 people had downloaded the piece,

I want to know how many of those were downloaded free within the first 24 hours.

Do you think there's any way to find out?

~*~

-- Laura (Ladylogic@...), March 21, 2000.

Wouldn't logic apply here?

We have the following data:

total_downloads = ca. 500,000

dollars_earned = 450,000

price_per_download = $2.50

Calculate paid downloads from dollars/price_per. Difference of total and paid is approx. number of "freebies".

What did I miss?

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), March 22, 2000.

I think that's a great idea... 66 thrilling pages by Stephen King for 2.50... excellent, considering that just going to a movie cost 3 times that much most places.

Dee, your a very observant smart cookie! :-)

320,000 downloaded free

180,000 paid for

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), March 22, 2000.

cpr---

Thanks for the cyberbrief link. In a past post on Biffy (Mar 4, I think), you mentioned that Wired Magazine was passe as a leading edge source of tech news. I wondered what you wouuld recommend instead. Is this it? Do you have any other recommendations?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), March 22, 2000.

What am I missing here? What's to prevent someone from copying the online book and emailing it anywhere? Copyright law?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), March 23, 2000.