The world of Stephen King publishing, which is always a weird and exciting place, has recently gotten even stranger. Starting next month, Stephen King’s popular 2009 novel, Under the Dome, will finally be released in mass-market paperback. Actually, make that paperbacks, plural – the book is divided in half; part one comes on February 25th, and part 2 arrives March 25th. Questions arise: why now? Why did it take so long? And is this just a cynical cash grab to capitalize on the overwhelming success of the miniseries? All fair questions, but the answers might be a little more surprising and complex than you’d think.
Publishing as a whole is different than it was even ten years ago. While the business of print publishing hasn’t fallen into fiery ruins as some predicted when King’s “Riding the Bullet” was the first eBook bestseller, digital titles have absolutely impacted sales of traditional books. The bookstore chain Borders has gone out of business, in part because they underestimated the pull of digital reading. The New York Times have added both an eBook bestsellers list and a combined eBook/print list. Stephen King has taken to publishing some work – “Ur,” “Mile 81,” “A Face In the Crowd” – exclusively digitally.
Perhaps most interesting is the impact eBooks have had on mass-market paperbacks, those small, inexpensive pocket-sized books that used to populate the front-of-store displays in mall and airport bookstores. Their sales, in the past far healthier than that of hardcovers, are on the decline. It looks like eBooks are a big part of that decline. The traditional model for a bestselling writer like King has always followed a standard pattern: a new hardcover is released, usually in the midst of a major selling season, and about a year later, a mass market paperback reprint arrives (except in special cases like Christine, the paperback edition of which came out a mere six months after the hardcover). Now, for far less than the price of a typical hardcover, you can instantaneously download the new Stephen King novel… and not have to wait a year to get the bargain.
Contemporary print publishing has responded in interesting ways. In an effort to retain the readers who appear to be mass-market paperbacks’ primary audience – Baby Boomers – some publishers have introduced a taller-sized mass-market paperback (seven and a half inches high, rather than the traditional six and three-quarters inches). The new dimensions of these mass-market books allow for larger print and more white space in between lines of text, a direct response to older readers’ often worsening eyesight. (The new price point for these taller mass markets, close to $10, is likely not incidental.) Pocket Books, Stephen King’s paperback publisher (and, interestingly, the publisher who introduced the mass-market format in 1939) first released Cell in this new size in 2006, and have published every Stephen King mass-market book in this fashion since.
If the new size of mass-markets exists to hold on to King’s (and other bestselling writers’) existing audience, then the advent of the trade paperback in King’s reprint bibliography is intent on building a new audience. Ever since King left Viking in 1998, his new publisher, Scribner, has worked toward a broader audience and away from the perception of King as “horrormeister,” a designation that has both helped and harmed his reputation. Presenting bright and colorful book covers, King’s name in a more subdued font than the one on earlier books, and blurbs by authors like Nicholas Sparks and Amy Tan rather than Jack Ketchum and Dean Koontz, helped Scribner make King approachable to audiences turned off by horror. King won the National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003, building on his reputation as a literary writer. It only made sense that Scribner would begin to publish King’s paperbacks in the trade format. Long the format for literary fiction, the trade paperback – made with better paper, heavier covers, and a size closer to that of the hardcover than their mass-market cousins – lends an aura of prestige. They even got their own New York Times bestseller list in 2007, “[giving] more emphasis to the literary novels and short-story collections reviewed so often in our pages (and sometimes published only in softcover).” Perhaps anticipating trends, Scribner reprinted King’s 2000 instructional guide/memoir On Writing as a trade, underscoring the literary merits of that book and setting the stage for later books.
One of the other exciting advantages of trade paperbacks is in their swiftness to hit the market. While mass-market books would generally take a year to come out in paperback, most trades follow the Christine model: about six months after the hardcover. On Writing was released in hardcover in October of 2000, and was out in trade the following June. While many of King’s subsequent books followed traditional printing, Under the Dome was published in November of 2009 and came out in trade in May 2010. 11/22/63 followed suit, arriving in hardcover in November of 2010 and in trade July 2011. The Wind Through the Keyhole performed similarly, but that has always been the case with Dark Tower novels; in the early days, trade was the only way regular readers could get their hands on those books, due to their subject matter and the limited nature of their hardcover counterparts.
Though The Wind Through the Keyhole was eventually released as a mass-market paperback (by way of a conventional schedule, about a year after the hardcover), there has been no discussion of the same for 11/22/63 (nor for the slender Blockade Billy). The same has been true for Under the Dome… until now. In the past, when a new movie or TV show based on a King novel would arrive, King’s paperback publishers would issue a new movie tie-in cover – that’s how books like Hearts in Atlantis and Dreamcatcher finally made it to the #1 spot on the New York Times paperback bestseller list. Now, publishers seem to have been waiting for a mass-market success to produce a mass-market book.
After the runaway success of the first season of Under the Dome adaptation, these new paperbacks seem engineered toward drumming up excitement toward season 2, as well as for the novel itself. These releases are aimed at the larger television audience who likely wouldn’t buy the hardcover or even the similarly-sized trade. While previous mega-long bestsellers like It and The Stand fit easily in regular mass-market editions, the split and staggered release of the Under the Dome mass-markets makes sense for today’s market. With the new “easier to read” edict for the 7.5” paperbacks, these books are also easier to hold– at nearly 1,300 combined pages, a single paperback might actually turn off potential new readers. Setting the release dates of the two paperbacks a month apart also keeps these new readers in mind, especially those who enjoy the serialized storytelling of the show and might be eager to replicate the experience. New American Library did the same with Desperation and The Regulators in 1997: though the books – which tell different stories with the same characters – came out on the same day in hardcover, in paperback, Desperation came out a month earlier than its altered twin.
Will this release make the publishers – and Stephen King – money? Sure. And that’s fine. There are often complaints when King releases work strictly online, or strictly in limited-edition formats. More access equals more readers, and those people who don’t like digital reading and who have been waiting for the paperback are now in luck. For the first time, Under the Dome will be available in every existing format for any reader who wants one, and because the story is a good one, that’s a very good thing indeed.
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Kevin Quigley is an author whose website, CharnelHouseSK.com, is one of the leading online sources for Stephen King news, reviews, and information. He has written several books on Stephen King for Cemetery Dance Publications, including a book on comics and Stephen King, Drawn Into Darkness, as well as Chart of Darkness, Stephen King Limited, 13, and co-wrote the recently released Stephen King Illustrated Movie Trivia Book. His first novel, I’m On Fire, is forthcoming. Find his books at cemeterydance.com