by George Beahm
The combined book covers to The Regulators and Desperation
King’s commonsense viewpoint prevailed.
Faced with the challenge of promoting two major books by King at the same time, the hip-joined publishers pulled out all the stops. The $2 million advertising and promotion campaign included a two-for-one pack, in which both books were shrink-wrapped together, with a “keep-you-up-all-night” book light, limited to two hundred thousand sets; a floor display unit with a revolving top, stocked with a dozen copies; a special toll-free number (1-888-4-Bachman) for recorded information on The Regulators; abridged audios read by Kathy Bates (for Desperation) and Mary-Louise Parker (for The Regulators); thirty-second TV ads to push the paired books; and linked Web sites.
What the publishers termed the “in your face, in your mind” campaign worked as planned: King—and Bachman—fans knew the books were stacked in bookstores awaiting their arrival.
TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT
King fans were happy to get a free book light when they bought both novels together, but when they found out subsequent customers got a little paperback with the first two chapters of his forthcoming Dark Tower novel, Wizard and Glass, some of the aggrieved fans complained loudly online. King’s response, posted online on November 21, 1996, follows:
Gentle Readers: It’s reached my attention that there’s been a fair degree of pissing and moaning about the Wizard and Glass booklet which comes with a dual purchase of Desperation and The Regulators. I swear to God, some of you guys could die and go to heaven and then complain that you had booked a double occupancy room, and where the hell is the sauna, anyway? The major complaints seem to be coming from people who have already bought both books. Those of you who bought the double-pack got the light, right? A freebie. So whatcha cryin’ about? The booklet was my idea, not the publisher’s—a little extra for people who wanted to buy both books after supplies of the famous “Keep You Up All Night” light ran out. If you expected to get the booklet in addition to the light, all I can say is sorry, Cholly, but there may not be enough booklets to go around. If you bought the two books separately, because there weren’t any gift packs left (they sold faster than expected, which is how this booklet deal came up in the first place), go back to where you bought them, tell the dealer what happened, show him or her your proof of (separate) purchase, and they’ll take care of you. If they get wise wicha, tell ‘em Steve King said that was the deal. If you’re just jacked because you want to read the first two chapters of Wizard and Glass, wait until the whole thing comes out. Or put it on your T.S. [tough shit] List and give it to the chaplain. In any case, those of you who are yelling and stamping your feet, please stop. If you’re old enough to read, you’re old enough to behave.
DESPERATION, BY STEPHEN KING
The idea for the novel came to King in 1991. He had flown out to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, to retrieve his daughter Naomi’s car, and driving on the way back through Ruth, Nevada, he noticed its sparse population and thought, “The sheriff killed them all.” And thus was born the mining town of Desperation and its deputy named Entragian, who is not what he seems.
As King explained to Gilbert Cruz in Time magazine (2009):
I was raised in a religious household, and I really wanted to give God his due in this book. So often, in novels of the supernatural, God is a sort of kryptonite substance, or like holy water to a vampire. You just bring on God, and you say “in his name,” and the evil thing disappears. But God as a real force in human lives is a lot more complex than that. And I wanted to say that in Desperation. God doesn’t always let the good guys win.
I always wanted to say that you can still reconcile the idea that things are not necessarily going to go well without falling back on platitudes like “God has a plan” and “This is for the greater good.” It’s possible to be in pain and still believe that there is some force for good in the universe. That certainly doesn’t mean to say that everybody should go out and join the First United Church of My God Is Bigger Than Your God. That’s half the trouble with the world. Maybe more.
THE REGULATORS, BY RICHARD BACHMAN
King’s unpublished screenplay, “The Shotgunners,” written for film director Sam Peckinpah, was the inspiration for The Regulators. As King recalled in Ann Lloyd’s Films of Stephen King, “It was a strange story of vigilante ghosts from the last century appearing in a Western town to avenge a hanging. They came not on horseback but in three, long black Cadillacs with darkened windows. Peckinpah was in preproduction when he died of a heart attack in 1984.”
In a review of The Regulators, Robert Polito of The New York Times (October 20, 1996) wrote:
The Regulators forsakes even the promise of genre play for generic (and interminable) Tak savagery. It transports the same cast to a mirror-image “Nevada of the mind”—suburban Wentworth, Ohio—with countless verbal echoes and many role reversals. David Carver is now father to his parents, the whiny Ralph and Ellen. Collie Entragian is a former police officer—not a satanic killing machine but disgraced, ineffectual and sad. John Marinville writes children’s books about a feline detective, Pat the Kitty-Cat. And characters in this “Richard Bachman” fiction occasionally talk about reading Stephen King novels.
A Bulleted Book
In what has to be the most imaginative limited edition book ever conceived for a King novel, The Regulator’s fifty-two lettered copies were each placed in an oversized box to make room for its spent bullet casings. Overseen by Peter Schneider and designed by Joe Stefko, of Charnel House, the Western motif is carried literally all the way through the book’s design, as Peter explained in its press release:
We used a western theme. The box is basically a wooden tray case, but the book inside is bound in full grain leather, with the name, the title of the book, and the author’s name branded on the spine. Protruding from the cover are the heads of four Winchester .30-.30 bullets that stick up approximately a half inch; on the back cover, the ends of the fired cartridges protrude—the little pin marks show on the back of each cartridge, since Joe Stefko actually had them fired.
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THE GREEN MILE
MARCH–AUGUST 1996
It’s just an appliance.
It’s job is not to fry toast or to fry eggs but to fry human beings’ asses.
—STEPHEN KING, ON “OLD SPARKY,” THE ELECTRIC CHAIR ON THE MOVIE SET OF THE GREEN MILE (THE GREEN MILE: WALKING THE MILE, 2014)
The practice of releasing works in serial form reached its height of popularity in the nineteenth century, when writers—including Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens—published novels in installments to boost magazine sales.
The practice, however, continues: Even before the renewed interest in serial publication spawned by the Internet, in 1996, Stephen King agreed to serialize a novel published in six installments as mass market paperbacks. The project was a result of a conversation about serialized fiction between Ralph Vicinanza, the literary agent who handled King’s foreign rights, and Vicinanza’s friend, the British publisher Malcolm Edwards, who suggested the idea. Vicinanza then approached King with the idea, and King, who is always game for a new way of publishing, wholeheartedly embraced the idea. An intuitive novelist who doesn’t outline, his experiment would be a challenge, and a matter of faith.
Illustrated by Atlanta artist Mark Geyer, the books were originally published as mass market paperbacks, each priced at $2.99. The publisher cumulatively sold twenty million copies. It was a record year for King, with eight titles on the bestseller list, including the six installments of The Green Mile, Desperation, and The Regulators.
No one in book publishing history, before or after, had ever accomplished that feat. (As a result of The Green Mile, The New York Times changed its rules for their bestseller lists so that episodes of a serialized novel counted only as one book.)
THE GENESIS
In an introduction that appeared in the trade paperback edition, King confessed that he suffers from cyclical i
nsomnia and thus tries “to keep a story handy for those nights when sleep won’t come.” On one such night, a story came to him. He describes it as:
a bedtime story called “What Tricks Your Eye.” It was about a man on death row—a huge black man—who develops an interest in sleight-of-hand as the date of his execution draws near.… At the end of the story, just before his execution, I wanted the huge prisoner, Luke Coffey, to make himself disappear.
It was a good idea, but the story wouldn’t work for me. I tried it a hundred different ways, it seemed, and it still wouldn’t work for me.
But as time passed, King thought of a way that would work, and Luke Coffey became John Coffey, whose initials are deliberately suggestive. The completed book is one of his finest works, as is the major motion picture based on a screenplay by Frank Darabont, who also directed it.
Since King doesn’t outline, he in effect was driving blind in thick fog. “That is part of the excitement of the whole thing, though,” he wrote in an introduction to The Green Mile. To an Entertainment Weekly interviewer, King explained that the serialization process is “old-fashioned. The opposite of instant gratification—like pushing a button online and getting something off your laser printer. Not this time.”
This time, you’d have to wait to read the next installment, just like the American readers in 1841 who stood dockside in New York City to get Master Humphrey’s Clock serializing The Old Curiosity Shop. In other words, no instant gratification. Better yet, from King’s perspective, you wouldn’t be able to turn to the last few pages to see how it ended, which he hates.
If you are prone to say, “The suspense is killing me,” then The Green Mile, stretched out over a period of several months, from March to August 1996, was surely a frustrating experience.
As King began publishing the individual installments, it became clear that the high-wire act was going to be a success. As Ralph Vicinanza wrote in an introduction to The Green Mile, “The first title in the series, The Two Dead Girls, went on sale at the end of March … and within days we knew it was a hit. It zoomed to the number one position on the New York Times best-seller list. Sales were heavy in all locations.”
After the six installments were published, they were collected as one novel of 399 pages, along with an introduction and a foreword by King.
As King frequently says in interviews, he’s not interested in plot—he’s interested in characters, and in this novel, we understand why: The characters drive the plot, and not the other way around. The novel is centered on a black man standing six feet, eight inches, who dwarfs the prison staff manning death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in Georgia.
The supporting cast includes Paul Edgecombe who realizes that there’s more to John Coffey than meets the eye; a sadistic guard named Percy Wetmore, who looks down at the world from his short height; a crazed inmate named “Wild Bill” Wharton, who lives up to his name; and a mouse named Mr. Jingles, who figures largely herein.
Burdened by man’s woes, by man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, their cumulative weight falls squarely on John Coffey’s large, broad shoulders, who must bear up under the load—or die trying.
John Coffey’s numinous presence is a light that shines, even in the darkest of places: a prison’s death row, in cell block E, where the green mile—named after its green-colored linoleum floor—is the end of the road for its inmates.
PART FIVE
SCRIBNER:
BUILDING BRIDGES
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THE WINTER OF KING’S DISCONTENT
The only guy he ever cared about was Tom Clancy. They were both at Penguin once, and it was made clear to King that he was seen as the second banana to Clancy. He didn’t like that, but he’s very content where he is right now [Scribner].
—KING’S LITERARY AGENT, CHUCK VERRILL, ROLLING STONE, OCTOBER 2014
EASY RIDER
Angus and Robertson Bookstore, Hurstville, Australia
It’s closing time, late at night, and the store owner is happy to see the day end without seeing any trouble in his new bookstore. Other retailers in the area have suffered robberies, which have all taken place at closing, so when he sees two men in leather jackets, worn jeans, and ass-kicking boots walk in, his heart skips a beat. One of them stands over six feet tall and looks like he could be trouble. A badass. Bad to the bone. The bookseller swallows hard. Looks like it’s my turn, he thinks. The taller man puts his large hand in a pocket, and the bookseller gulps. Is he going for a handgun or brass knuckles? But out comes a fistful of dollars.
“I’d like to see your bestseller list because I probably have a few books on it,” the stranger says. The bookseller, visibly relieved, finds it and hands it over to the man, who studies it carefully. “Yeah, I’ve got a few on here,” he says.
It’s Stephen King, who drove up on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which he arranged to have flown in from Bangor.
Meanwhile, in New York City…
Halfway around the world, Arthur B. Greene, King’s business manager, who then doubled as literary agent, was hard at work. King was unhappy with New American Library and made no bones about it. The root cause was a recent merger with Putnam, which meant that he was now displaced as king of the hill; he now occupied the number two position in book sales, clobbered by Tom Clancy, about whom King wrote, in The New York Times (November 9, 1998), “Clancy sells more copies than I do and [former Penguin Putnam CEO] Phyllis Grann is their rabbi, simple as that.” (In her defense, in the same story, an anonymous person “said that Mr. King was nervous that the publishing house had become ‘Tom Clancy’s company and he had this incredible competition with Clancy.’”)
No longer the belle of the ball in his publisher’s eyes, King realized that the only thing missing was a bucket of pig blood. King told The New York Post, “Putnam brought in a very potent list … I’m only speculating here, but I think I was just not that important anymore to them. I got the feeling from them, ‘If you want to go, go.’”
Marilyn Ducksworth, a publicity flack for New American Library, vehemently disagreed. “We wanted to continue the relationship and did everything in our power to keep him that was economically viable.”
I’m speculating here, but I think that New American Library tendered its best offer and honestly didn’t want to lose him but that Scribner was adamant about bagging King no matter what it took.
In terms of representing King to prospective publishers, Greene (an attorney, accountant, and longtime business manager in New York City), handled the deal in an unorthodox manner. King told The New York Times that Greene had “done a great job.… But he’s not primarily a literary agent. It would not have been handled this way by an agent.”
As one publisher, who had a bone to pick with Greene’s method, explained to The New York Times, “A letter was submitted, which seemed very weird, while King was in Australia. You have a Stephen King, you pick up the phone. You don’t write a letter; the publisher meets with the author.”
The anonymous publisher’s comments were echoed by an anonymous literary agent, who said, “You call a publisher and say, ‘let’s talk.’ And by then, you’ve worked up the numbers. You don’t just pull them out of the air. But it’s not only about money; it’s about editing, publishing philosophy, which psychology works best.”
Greene, though, simply sent out letters to prospective publishers and asked for bids, stipulating the size of the next book advance (for Bag of Bones) to be $17 million, the royalty rate 27 percent, and a reversion clause that effectively leases the books, instead of selling them outright in perpetuity for the duration of the copyright.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, the industry’s international gathering in October 1997, the talk was about the negotiations as much as it was about Bag of Bones. “I know we did it the wrong way,” King told The New York Times in an article by Martin Arnold published a month later. “Hopefully, in the end, the talk will be about the book and not about the negotiations.”
WHAT’S
THE BIG DEAL?
Scribner, FSG (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Random House, Warner, Morrow, and Atlantic Monthly/Grove got Greene’s package. They all began crunching numbers, knowing what was at stake: millions of dollars over the long run, and an author who came with a loyal, book-buying fan base. Publishing King, in short, was risk-free publishing if the terms were right.
New American Library had a lot to lose. They had a vested interest and had made a big investment in King over the years. Though New American Library gave it their best shot, their effort fell short, and in the end King made a decision to move to Scribner, whose executives were elated. It would prove to be, as they had hoped, a highly profitable deal.
The Scribner deal went well beyond a traditional author-publisher relationship. From what I understand, in exchange for a smaller advance for each book ($2 million a book), King would be partners with the publisher, not simply a client. For King, it was one hell of a good deal. The guarantee of an equitable split meant that King had a stake in the company, just as the company had a stake in him. In other words, it was symbiotic, and not a traditional publisher-author relationship, the kind that hobbled him at Doubleday in his early years.
Scribner signed his next three books, including Bag of Bones, which was already complete, a short story collection (Hearts in Atlantis), and a book on writing (On Writing).
Years later, in Time magazine, King reflected on what had happened:
I was squeezed out at Viking, because Phyllis Grann came from Putnam, and she brought with her Tom Clancy, who sold more books than I did. There was a feeling at Viking that they couldn’t support two big money writers. And I was the one that went.… But the people I still deal with at Scribner were people who were interested in the book rather than the reputation of the writer, which was a penny-dreadful reputation at that point. I give them a lot of credit. To some degree, they rehabilitated my reputation.
