How I Scared Stephen King

Back in 2000, I was writing for a digital advertising agency, and a company called SoftLock was one of our clients. SoftLock had developed the technology that enabled books to be downloaded from the web, unlocking the content after you paid for it. Not even Amazon could do this yet. And Kindle wouldn’t exist for another seven years.
 
Simon and Schuster, a leading publishing company, had partnered with SoftLock to host and release what was then the world’s first downloadable e-book, written by the iconic author Stephen King--a novella titled, Riding the Bullet. 
 
Stephen King wrote Riding the Bullet exclusively for this new digital medium and wanted it to be available by download only. So in addition to his voluminous writing achievements, King was also responsible for launching the e-book industry. 
 
Simon & Schuster set the price for Riding the Bullet at $2.50 per download. The option to download one chapter at a time for 25-cents each was considered, but eventually nixed.
 
So far, not so scary.
My assignment was to write the digital advertising campaign to promote the
e-book, entice Stephen King readers to use this new technology, and announce when and where they could get the book. 
 
I remember the thrill I felt when Simon and Schuster sent me an advanced copy, which I read voraciously to prepare for the campaign.
 
I was a huge Stephen King fan when I was younger. I can vividly recall sitting in my living room one evening in the 80’s, reading Pet Cemetery late at night while my wife and kids slept. I nearly jumped out of my skin every time the old house creaked or the wind rattled a window. The fact that there was an actual pet cemetery right around the corner from our house served to greatly amplify the mood. 
 
The ads I wrote were approved by Simon & Schuster easily and quickly, much to our delight. And the national online media plan was then approved. With the date of March 14th set for the book’s release, we launched the campaign to run for six weeks prior to the day of the launch.
 
But here’s the scary part.
King himself predicted his book would generate somewhere around 60,000 downloads. Since none of us had any prior experience with this new publishing medium, this seemed a reasonable number. And at $2.50 a pop, $150,000 wasn’t a bad return, particularly since there were no printing, binding, shipping or inventory costs involved. 
 
But, to Mr. King’s, Simon & Shuster’s, ours’ and the rest of the world’s surprise, within the first 24-hours of the book becoming available, more than 400,000 people tried to simultaneously download and pay for the book.
 
The completely overwhelmed server crashed and cascaded, causing the computers of countless customers to also crash. When the server was quickly repaired and back online, after all was said and done, more than 500,000 people had downloaded the book. 
 
It goes without saying that an estimated $1.2 million return was a hell of a lot more than $150K. A scary amount more.
 
The reverberations caused by such an overwhelming response to this new digital method of delivering and reading books sent shockwaves throughout the industry, changing the future of publishing (and reading) forever. 
 
Just like Alan Parker, the main character in Riding the Bullet, the publishing industry also got into a strange car and embarked on a frightening ride into the unknown. And while Alan Parker’s ride eventually ended, the publishing industry is still evolving as new digital technologies, platforms and media enable writers and readers to discover and explore new ways to connect.
 
But one thing will never change… our perpetual yearning for great stories. As Stephen King himself wrote, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” 
 
And someone else said, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. But the person who never reads lives one.” Hmmm, seems to me that this profound statement could also become the premise for another Stephen King story... Stephen, what do you think?
 
If you’d like my help crafting your next digital ad campaign or would like me to tell the kinds of stories your digital and print direct response fundraising donors will respond to in overwhelmingly numbers, then send me an email. 

I’m not the least bit scary to work with.  Just ask my no-longer-dead dog. 

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