Dear Mr. King,
I don't consider myself a complete fangirl. I haven't named my dog, Cujo. I don't have a tattoo of Christine the demonic car across my shoulders. And while I have a niece named Caroline, she never has and never will be called Carrie. At least by me.
I have not read even a tenth of the 112 books you have published, but I admire your story-telling abilities and writerly discipline. The Shining, without a doubt, is the scariest late-night reading ever. Red-rum. Red-rum. Maximum creep factor. (The movie version just made me laugh out loud, but I'm not sure how much you had to do with that.) You also get personal cred for being a Red Sox fan and for your charitable endeavors.
So, Stephen, what's up with the latest book?
Looking for a little light reading for a late-summer evening, I hopped onto Amazon to purchase one of your most recent books, Joyland. Well, knock me over with a card catalogue; it's not available as an e-book. Huh-whuh?
I know you have your reasons. They are right there in the book description:
"I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book." – Stephen King
Well, okay, there is a kind of a logic to that, and I get the noirish aesthetic angle. I loved paperbacks, too. But right now I just don't want to buy an actual book.
Here's the deal: I'm old. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. I don't want to go piling up stuff that my relicts will have to deal with. I like books that are invisible until I plunk the magic twanger and they magically appear, glowing in the dark.
Another thing is that it is summer. The height of the tourist season here on lovely old Cape Cod. The nearest bookstore is miles and miles away, and, like I said, I'm old. I don't want to spend a half-hour trying to turn out onto or in from our lovely old Route 6. Talk about a clogged artery. Nor do I want to spend over an hour making the ten-mile trip back from a possible fruitless outing to the nearest metropolis.
Yes, I could order it from Amazon. I don't worry about the carbon footprint thing. The UPS truck is coming into this neck of the woods anyway. I order little things all the time in the summer--plastic storage containers, a watering can, a crochet hook--because I don't want to drive to a store which will be filled with tourists, one of whom has probably grabbed the last C2032 battery right from under my watery eyes. Or to a store that has the goods, but not in a version I can live with. I mean, really, do I look like the kind of gal who want to be using a baby-pink watering can? If this is the last watering can I ever buy, I want to like the color.
But I just don't want to order something I don't want. Not even if you want me to. I'd like to have my own choice of reading experience.
Maybe I will get to read the book someday. Maybe somebody I know will buy it and pass it on. Maybe I will trip across a copy later on this year. But for now, I'm afraid it's NO SALE.
Sincerely yours,
Kathleen "The Codger" Rogers
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