"There's a fellow sitting up in Maine having fun," said one American literary agent last week, "but (what he's doing) is not a way to run a business."
That remains to be seen. The fellow, of course, is horror guru Stephen King and what he is doing is, once again, pushing the envelope of the way books are sold and distributed. Indeed, he is pushing the envelope of what a book even is.
In March, Mr. King made publishing history when, together with his longtime publisher, Simon & Schuster, he put a novella directly onto the Internet. But that was in an encrypted format that could not be accessed until paid for. Last week, he took a giant step further. Starting Monday, fans could download from Mr. King's Web site, for "a buck an episode," the first part of his still incomplete novel, "The Plant." (Amusingly to some, though not to Simon & Schuster, the plot concerns a creeping vampire plant that takes over a publishing company.)