The Plant
Encyclopedia
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
.
The novel is about the editor in a paperback publishing house, who gets a manuscript from what seems like a crackpot. The manuscript is about magic, but it also contains photographs that seem very real. He writes the author a rejection slip, but because of the photographs, he also notifies the police where the author lives. This enrages the author, who sends a mysterious plant to the editor's office.
The story is told in epistolary format
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...
, consisting entirely of letters, memos, and so on.
History
King wrote a few parts of a story by the same name, and sent them out as chapbookChapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
s to his friends, instead of Christmas card
Christmas card
A Christmas card is a greeting card sent as part of the traditional celebration of Christmas in order to convey between people a range of sentiments related to the Christmas and holiday season. Christmas cards are usually exchanged during the weeks preceding Christmas Day by many people in Western...
s, in 1982, 1983, and 1985. Only three installments were produced by Philtrum Press before the story was shelved, and the original editions are hotly sought-after collector's items today.
In 2000, King published the novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Riding the Bullet
Riding the Bullet
Riding the Bullet is a novella by Stephen King. This work marks King's debut on the Internet. Simon & Schuster, with technology by SoftLock, first published Riding the Bullet in 2000 as the world's first mass-market electronic book, available for download at $2.50...
over the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, making it the world's first mass-market e-book
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
. However, there were technical problems with downloading, and hackers
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
eventually cracked the encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
on it.
Later that year, King decided to release The Plant directly via his website, unencrypted and in installments. People could pay a one-dollar fee for each installment using the honor system
Honor system
An honor system or honesty system is a philosophical way of running a variety of endeavors based on trust, honor, and honesty. Something that operates under the rule of the "honor system" is usually something that does not have strictly enforced rules governing its principles...
. He threatened, however, to drop the project if the percentage of paying readers fell below 75 percent. He viewed the release as an experiment in alternate forms of distribution, writing on his website at the time, "My friends, we have the chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare."
More than 200,000 customers downloaded free copies of the story in a 24-hour promotion through the Barnes and Noble website.
The book received over the desired 75 percent for its first installment, but this fell to 70 percent after installment two. With the third installment, the numbers surged back up to 75 percent.
King decided to double the cost of the fourth part of the novel to two dollars, while at the same time doubling the number of pages to 54. He also promised to cap the total cost of the entire book at a total of 13 dollars. Paying readers dropped to 46 percent of downloads. The number of downloads decreased overall as well.
The last installment was published on December 18, 2000. The book has yet to be completed.