Thrilling News: King Finds Honesty Pays Off on Internet

For those weary of tales about deception, hacking and piracy on the Internet, consider this: Almost 100,000 people have paid author Stephen King when they didn’t really have to.

About 152,000 King fans have downloaded electronic copies of his latest online thriller in its first week on his Web site, and some 93,000 have already paid the $1 fee he asked for.

King’s office said that enough readers have either paid or promised to pay--roughly 76% of those who downloaded--that he will post at least the second installment of his serialized novella “The Plant” in three weeks.

“People are coming there and enjoying the story,” said King assistant Marsha DeFilippo. “I think we’ve done a respectable job of it so far.”

The number of people paying voluntarily impressed publishing and Internet analysts, who said King’s experiment with the honor system would probably be followed by other major authors.

“I’m blown away by the conversion rate,” said David Card, a senior analyst at Jupiter Communications in New York. “He has a tremendous fan base.”

Earlier this year, King’s longtime traditional publisher, Simon & Schuster, distributed more than 500,000 online copies of a King novella called “Riding the Bullet.”

Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com paid the small per-copy fee of $2.50 each for most of those and then gave them away, making the tale the first runaway success in e-books.

But because most consumers didn’t pay for the downloads and most of them didn’t read the book all the way through, the novella didn’t prove that electronic books would work as a business.

This time, however, King isn’t using an outside publisher. He is publishing the story himself online, so he can earn more money from “The Plant” even if fewer people read it.

And because he is trusting his audience, he is allowing the text to be printed, as opposed to “Riding the Bullet” and most other online books, which can be read only on a computer.

For King, best-selling author of “The Shining” and “Carrie,” this Internet publishing project is a modest gamble. He had already written three chapters of “The Plant” years ago and his overhead for delivering the book over his Web site are modest.

Other writers and publishers are watching the effort closely. Card said he expected more established authors to follow suit, but not mid-list authors who need the marketing clout of big publishers.

“It’s probably more interesting to other name-brand authors who might decide to create another window for their publishing,” Card said.

King said he would keep his project going, through as many as seven or eight installments, if more than 75% of those who download his work pay. DeFilippo said the 76% figure is an “educated guess” adjusted for people who had technical problems.

Some observers said that part of King’s draw was that readers wanted to reward him for experimenting.

“People don’t want to let him down,” said Carol Fitzgerald of the Book Report Network of publishing newsletters and Web sites. “It’s a testament to him stepping out the box and doing something different.”

That willingness to pay might thin out if many more authors try the same thing.

But if others try and succeed, the honor system could extend beyond the written word, some analysts said.

The biggest target would be the industry hit hardest by online piracy--the music business.

Although the major record labels have had little success thus far competing against free music-sharing programs such as Napster, that’s in part because “people are aware their favorite artists see very little of what they spend” on compact discs, said senior analyst Malcolm Maclachlan of International Data Corp. in Mountain View, Calif.

“If people felt they were ripping off their favorite artist, it might be different,” Maclachlan said. So it is possible that some bands will mimic King’s direct approach, using the honor system for, say, a subscription to fan material that includes music not available on CDs. “You’re going to see a lot of experimentation,” he said.