Anybody get and read Stephen King's "The Plant"? Was it worth the buck you spent?

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Answers

I haven't gone yet, because I'm afraid I'll get sucked in, and the story will end up being 50 chapters long, and I'll feel obligated to send a buck a pop, since he's almost blackmailing folks into paying him. ("If you don't pay, I won't write!") I worry that I'll spend thirty or forty bucks for something that, next year in paperback, will cost ten dollars.

I'll probably cave in, though.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

I thought of that too, Patrick. This first episode was 20 pages and ended on a cliff hanger, so it is kind of short, and it is addictive. Personally, I wish he'd stop goofing around and put the stuff in print. I prefer print very much to screen, mainly because of my eyes, which are going fast.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Yes, and yes.

But then, I'm biased. I'd probably pay to read his grocery list. "Carrie" was the first "adult" book I ever read, and thus Stephen King has been a lifelong favorite.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

I haven't done it because 1) there's no blurb on the site about it, so I don't get more than "It's a plant! It's funny. But scary like Christine!" I like Stephen King, but I don't like -all- of Stephen King. Without a vague idea of what it's about, I'm wary. 2) I don't want to start reading something there's no guarantee I'll get to finish. and 3) Stephen King is notoriously long-winded, and if he's writing per paid installment, there's nothing to stop him from writing a five thousand dollar serial that never ends.

I bought the book that came out on Amazon last time, willingly. I paid up front, and got the whole thing. When/if The Plant is ever done, I'll probably buy the whole thing. Of course, if I don't like what he produces without an editor at hand, I'll probably skip the next Internet experiment and just wait for his work to come out in bookstores.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Yes, I paid, yes, I downloaded, and I guess it was worth a buck. As I've said before, I'm not a Stephen King fan. I thought this was fairly middle-of-the-road King work, although I haven't read much of his recent stuff, so I may not be the best judge.

So why did I do it? Because I want this to work. I love books and I love the free information available on the internet, but I also love trees. I would love for there to be a viable and profitable alternative to paper -- maybe not as the only option, but at least for those authors who think it's a good idea, or for advance printings of books, or ... hell, I don't know; I'm not a publisher. I just think it's an interesting idea and I'm willing to put in a couple of bucks if it will encourage others to give this a try.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention: the editing is atrocious -- punctuation errors, irritating sentence construction, etc. But as we discussed previously, I don't think people read King for his pretty prose.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Actually, Beth, so far it's not as good as his recent work, which has been of very high quality. I think he's listening too much to fans who keep telling him he should go back to Carrie and Cujo and quit with the lit'ry nonsense. Or maybe this is just how it's coming out these days. No matter.

As for saving trees, it's unlikely to do that, since he'll probably issue the book print format anyway. (Not that the internet hasn't saved a few trees, but just not in this case.) I personally favor recycled paper over throwing everything up digitally. Again, the eyes.

Besides, I like to read in bed.

I do think PDF is the wave of the future for publishing, however. I might try it myself. There's a lot you can do in PDF. But the pricetag on Adobe Acrobat is just not reasonable for a poor schmuck like me. We'll see.

What will be interesting is if he fails to meet the quota of people who pay. Man o man, people are going to be torked. I'll be one of them.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Sorry to keep posting; I just keep thinking of other comments.

I selected the HTML version, and I have a big complaint: he couldn't do better than that? If an online journaler published in this format -- no margins, no breaks between paragraphs, nothing to visually break up this endless expanse of default font text -- you'd run away screaming. With all his money he couldn't hire a web designer to make up a simple template to make this easier to read?

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

I didn't see the HTML version, of course, but I'm pretty sure King hasn't either. I'm also sure he's about as internet savvy as a third world llama.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Saundra, so far it's a novel about witchcraft, written in letter format, memos, correspondance, etc. The main character is a book editor for a small publishing house and he gets a query letter about a book on the dark arts... It just started getting spooky when it ceased.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Thanks, Jim! :) Now that I know what it's about, I think I do want to read it. I'll just stick it out and see if the next two pieces get written, and just splurge (the whole three dollars *grin*) on the first three parts. I appreciate it!

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

I won't be downloading The Plant, and it has nothing to do with the money. I'm sure Mr. King could put his kids through college just on what I've spent on his books through the years.

I love books. It's that simple. I love the smell of new books, and old books and the glue that holds them together. I love the sound a new book makes when I open it, and how clean the pages are. I love the feeling of books with leather covers, and the feel of the paper as I turn the pages. I love curling up with a scary novel, or a murder mystery on a cloudy day, or reading my Harry Potter under the pecan tree in my front yard when it's a pretty day.

When, or if, Stephen King commits "The Plant" to paper, I'll be more than glad to send some more money his way.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Beth: I see your point, and would LOVE for the experiment to work -- in a slightly different format. If there were a set number of installments, each with a predetermined release date, and that was told to the customer? I'd buy them in a heartbeat. I just don't like the extortion-like quality of it. "Pay or I take my pen and go home!"

I'd buy books by my favorite authors online in a heartbeat. I'd prefer to have the books themselves, of course, but if there were "extras," only available on the web, I'd be the first to buy.

"The Green Mile" would have been a perfect book-in-installments for the web. This...this feels like King isn't at all serious about it.

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Yeah, I confess that I don't like the blackmail aspect. And thinking back on it, no, it wasn't worth a dollar. Not if this is one chapter -- it just wasn't very long; I'm now envisioning a $25 book. For that kind of money, I'd like a nice readable format (hate .pdf, so I didn't try that). I realize I'm being nitpicky, but I think this was a $.25-.50 installment at best.

But I paid for it, and I'll pay for the next one, too, just because if this fails, no one will blame King's blackmail marketing or the shoddy presentation -- they'll blame it on the fact that it's the internet.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Don't like King so wouldn't bother downloading it. There's an air of calculated and cynical money-grubbing to the enterprise which bothers the hell out of me. Apart from which, I like physical books as well and if I was going to read it at all I'd rather read it that way. I don't think there's any fear of him not finishing it, though, he'll probably have a good few more chapters up his sleeve already and no doubt it'll reach book form too; remember after doing "The Green Mile" in serial form, the one-volume publication of it didn't take too long to appear. I also heard he's been working on this story since 1980 or something. Been taking his time with it if that's the case

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Patrick, I see now that he does have a stated number of installments. Three. So it's a short book, more a long short story than a novel. Maybe about 60 pages. I don't know. Either way, it'll cost you no more than 3 bucks.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I downloaded the .pdf version of "The Plant," and got a printing error. I changed the print options to PostScript Level 2, and the whole file printed. It was a lucky guess.

The .txt version was three pages long, and cut the line off at the right margin, giving me roughly the first one-fifth of every paragraph.

The .html version didn't lop anything off, but it ran pages on, with no page breaks. The 20 page .pdf document was condensed to 10 pages of .html.

None of these was as easy to read as a book, although the .pdf version, once I got it to print, is as easy to read as the memos the story is constructed of.

As to "The Plant," not only is it a serialized novel, it's a short one, if the other two installments are the length of part one. Also, it's an epistolary novel. As William Saroyan said (Jim Valvis), when a character in a play turns and addresses the audience, you know you are in trouble.

I like Stephen King's occasional book reviews, interviews with him on the subject of craft, essays on genre fiction. I have read a couple of his novels, all the way through, and enjoyed them. I think he is well-informed, skillful, clever, and has caught the ear of an audience. A large audience. Something I had hoped to do, starting out. That is, I didn't want to be a critical success, I wanted to be popular. Not as popular as some writers of commercial fiction. But popular enough to make a living writing. More popular than midlist, which is a synonym for moribund, which is a nice way of saying deader than Kelsey's nuts.

I liked this story and will buy the next two installments. It's the sort of thing successful writers should write: the inside dirt on the profession. I always wanted Norman Mailer to tell me where the bodies were buried. But, as Gertrude Stein said about Hemingway, "There is the career."

I don't think the editing was bad. The poor punctuation and so on was in a letter from an unlettered person.

The first installment was worth a dollar, and I'll pay for the next two installments, to see how the story turns out. If it's published as a book, I don't see how it can be printed, advertised, distributed, and sold for less than $3.

I have four books at my web site now, five at the end of this month, which you can download and print out, free. That is, some things you can't give away. Why would a publisher reprint something I couldn't give away, on the Internet?

Maybe none will. Maybe it will take an Art Brew Geselleschaft.

Maybe it's all vanity and hot air.

That's the drama of it. The continuing story. The plot.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Ha, ha. Jack quoted Saroyan to me. That's pretty funny.

Anyway, Vonnegut's play is all about talking to the audience, so even Bill can't lay down too many hard fast rules. But I didn't get here that King was talking to the audience. This isn't the first time a story or novel has been written in letter format. I've done it myself.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

So did Goethe.

Anyway, as much as I'd like this kind of stuff to work, I don't care for horror stories. Too much negative energy.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Perhaps I should be more clear, since Jack isn't familiar with me or my work. Considering his dwindling popularity, I may be the biggest Saroyan fan going. Certainly more than his son, who hated him. I own original artwork by the man and first edition books and I named my journal based on something he wrote and so on. I think there isn't a word he made public I haven't read, often scanning old Saturday Evening Posts and other magazines for lost treasures. Someday, when the tide turns and there's a Saroyan revival, I will hopefully be in a position to use this knowledge to edit a complete collection of his work. Nothing would make me happier.

So I found the reference comical. Not in a bad way. Just a little funny. It's been a long time since someone quoted Saroyan to me and not the other way around. In fact, I don't think it's ever been done before.

That said, again, I don't think King was talking to the audience. The characters here are talking to each other. In that way, it's no all that different from dialogue. Only without the quotes.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Yeah, Goethe. And, ironically, very often Saroyan.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

You're right, Jim, King wasn't addressing the audience in "The Plant." It's an exchange of letters between, or among, several different parties.

I include letters I write to other people in my books, although you wouldn't call my books epistolary. (I might call Norbert Blei's The Second Novel epistolary).

Is the audience the addressee, or the reader? Am I writing journal entries for myself, or for an audience? I called a series of related books Letter From an Imaginary Friend, a takeoff on Letter to an Imaginary Friend, and have often said I intend the books to read like a letter to a friend--a letter with all the recent poems, stories, posts to forums, replies to rejoinders to rebuttals, and so forth, included.

I liked the way Saroyan would address the reader, in the middle of something.

I know you are a Saroyan fan, from the title of your defunct journal, with its epigraph from Saroyan. I'm a fan of his, too.

This switching voices is postmodern in an unself-conscious way. If you can be postmodern in an unself-conscious way.

Tom Dean calls it a private language. One hopes, with a large enough slice.... Sometimes it's like listening to a pot-head free- associate. You have to be stoned to make the same associations and connections. Thus the problem of inter-subjectivity, or communication.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I'm a big King fan. I downloaded it, read it, but I'm not going to pay a dollar for it. One chapter, 20 pages, for one dollar? If he writes the seven chapters that he says it will take to finish the book, I think 140 pages for $7 is outrageous.

If this is supposed to be like shareware (pay if you like it), then I'm not paying.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I won't be downloading The Plant. I was sucked into the whole "Green Mile" thing, and while I thought it was excellent, and I loved the movie, I was still a little put out. Yes, it's nice that King isn't afraid to experiment, but I paid something like $3-$4 per installment of "The Green Mile" (I'm Canadian. The Canadian dollar and the Goods and Services Tax on books are evil and make books too expensive, but that's another rant). Then, a few months after all of them were published, the one-volume version came out. It still cost close to $10, but that's still cheaper than $25. Stephen King writes monolithically huge books. A dollar a chapter would make it prohibitively expensive, and then three months later-- Hardcover! Nine months after that-- Trade! A year after that-- Paperback!

Besides, my love affair with King ended with Desperation and The Regulators. Sorry, Steve, but they sucked.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Let me say it again, in case someone missed it. Three dollars. No more, no less. You may still find that expensive, but it will not go past three dollars.

I don't think he ever said it was shareware. If you read, you're supposed to pay. At least that was my understanding.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Mr. King has posted some new info on his site regarding the various installments. Episodes 1 thru 6 will be a dollar, but episodes 7 and 8, due to their length (25K words) will be 2.50 each. Although I paid a buck for the first chapter, given this new info, I'm going to take a pass on the rest of the chapters.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I have no interest in King so I won't be downloading it. But even if it were an author I love, I wouldn't bother. I also prefer to read in book form.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Well, dmcarls is right. Almost. From King's webpage:

How many installments will there be? Stephen's comment: "Here's the truth: When I made a decision to post the first two installments of The Plant, my hopes of success weren't very high. Publicly, I have always expressed a great deal of confidence in human nature, but in private I have wondered if anybody would ever pay for anything on the Net. It now looks as though people will, and I am faced with the real possibility of finishing The Plant. I don't think anyone wants to buy 5,000 word installments over a period of over 20 months, and my experience with The Green Mile makes me think that interest would fade, anyway. Therefore, what I propose doing is this: Episode 2, 6-7,000 words; Episode 3, 10-12,000 words. Download price in both cases would remain $1. Installments 4 through 7 or 8 would be much longer-perhaps as long as 25,000 words-and the download price would go up to $2.50. What do you think about this? Will it work?

I feel duped.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Me, too. And I already ruined my scheme -- I only paid to help show that something like this could succeed, but since I viewed it in HTML I didn't bother to save it or (I'm such an idiot) bookmark it. Thus, when I wanted to take another look at it, I had to do so via the honor system, but of course I'm not going to send him *another* dollar. So when he tracks hits vs. payments, there's one more deadbeat to add to the list.

But yeah, the ultimate price of this thing has me feeling a little duped. When this thing fails, he won't blame the price or the crappy presentation, though; as I said, he and his publishers will just blame it on the web.

The bad punctuation I mentioned, by the way, had to do mostly with dashes and hyphens, which look fine in the .pdf version and like shit in the HTML version.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Can someone who knows more than me about word count-to-page ratios (a.k.a. anyone) translate what that would mean? I was very much of the same mind as Beth in the beginning -- I downloaded it just to prove it would work. But the price-to-page ratio seems a little ridiculous as it escalates. Can someone help me out and do the math?

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Look at it this way, Kim. If the book comes out to be novel length, you're paying about three to five bucks less than hardcover and eight to eleven dollars more than paperback. I told you King has no internet sense. Stuff on the internet should be cheaper, since it costs less in production and distribution and even advertisement. King said he wanted to stick it to the big time publishers, but he's really ending up sticking it to the reader.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

The fact that he never planned people to go along, and didn't plan to finish the story, I don't know how well that bodes for the quality of the rest of it. Who knows? I think I now will definitely wait until it's out in bookstores to buy it, if not just waiting for it to hit the library.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

I was right about "The Plant" being an old bit of work; click here for the story. Seems to have been something he left unfinished about fourteen years ago; the author of this piece wonders why King is going back now to revisit such old ground.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2000

I admit that I skipped half of the posts in this thread because I am at work and spent all morning updating my journal and reading the onion.

I haven't read the book because I don't like Stephen King. However, I think the idea is great. I always liked the idea of adventure-serials when I was a kid and have been toying with the idea for a while of getting back into (shutup) fantasy writing that I did when I was a teenager. I think one of the most interesting things I could do would be to do it as a serial with an overall idea of a plotline but not "I'm going to write twenty chapters, it will begin like this and end like this." Posting a new chapter each week or two and getting feedback, then writing the next chapter based both on my own ideas and maybe some ideas that the readers gave me.

If I could actually charge people a quarter to read each new chapter, that would be great, just like it would be great if people would pay a dime or a nickel to read columns on Retrogression. But I don't want to get into that debate.

I agree with beth, there needs to be an alternative to print publishing, AND the computer industry needs to be more ecologically sound (The SF Examiner did a good expose on this a month or two ago). Also, there needs to be a way for smaller writers to make a living without needing to sell the hundreds of thousands needed to get picked up by a publishing house. I'd much rather work 40 hours a week writing stuff for Retrogression, writing a fantasy serial, writing a journal, and whatever else I want to write and pull in $20K a year from 5-10 thousand readers than work full time and have no time to write or have to conform to some publishers idea of what will sell to a huge audience so I can get a tiny share of the wealth that I am creating.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2000

Actually, does anyone know if there are any websites which publish serial fiction? I have a friend who started a serial a couple of months ago, and he said he couldn't find any (and he has looked, believe me), so that inspired me to start one as well. If anyone knows of any I'd love to hear about it.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2000

"Actually, does anyone know if there are any websites which publish serial fiction? I have a friend who started a serial a couple of months ago, and he said he couldn't find any (and he has looked, believe me), so that inspired me to start one as well. If anyone knows of any I'd love to hear about it."

You could start your own...The one web site I know is Elgonquin that I work on (we have journals and a few serial stories and a few fictional journals), but that's a fairly established community at this point and people that write them have come from the message board. We don't pay though, if that's what you were looking for (sorry). I'd recommend checking the board for awhile and getting a feel for things before deciding if here's where you want to go. And you'd need to mention it to one of the two running the site so that could go up for discussion.

Which reminds me, I need to work on another journal entry for Monday :P

-- Anonymous, July 29, 2000

I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but the annoyingly- named fatbrain.com does online publishing of books for companies.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2000