Demand for Stephen King eBook Strangles Downloads

By Sushuma March 15, 2000 11:58 AM

(CNN)-The release of his first eBook Tuesday has Stephen King convinced that the printed word on paper isn't going to be replaced by text on a computer screen any time soon. "Riding the Bullet," a 66-page King ghost story, was made available at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday only on the Internet. Web sites including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com were swamped with requests, making downloading it nearly impossible. "All the servers have reached 100 percent capacity and gone over several times today," said Pat Eisemann, a spokeswoman for Scribner, the co-publisher with King's Philtrum Press. "Everybody is pretty much crashing and you can't get through." "Riding the Bullet," written shortly after King's near-fatal accident in June, is about a hitchhiker finding a ride. It sells for $2.50 on many Web sites, though Barnes & Noble made it available for free Tuesday, and Amazon has no plans to charge for the download, according to company spokeswoman Kristin Schaefer. eBooks are still not quite mainstream, despite some early support and eager startups. "Stephen King's decision to publish his new short story in electronic format is a concrete declaration that the eBook format has arrived," said Steve Riggio, vice chairman of Barnes & Noble.com. "We see a time in the not too distant future when virtually every book in print will be available in both physical and electronic formats."