Stephen King writes ebook horror story for new Kindle
Alison Flood in
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 February 2009


Author Stephen King holds up a pink Amazon Kindle 2 electronic reader at a news conference in New York Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

An e-reader which arrives, mysteriously, via one-day delivery. A lovelorn college instructor who, in dabbling with ebooks, falls into a literary world full of horrors beyond imagining. It can only be Stephen King, back to grasping new technology with both hands, this time with a novella he's written exclusively for the new version of Amazon's Kindle.
The widely-anticipated launch of the second version of the Kindle yesterday saw King taking the stage to read an extract from the new novella Ur, which is due for release on 24 February alongside the updated e-reading device.
Ur follows King's earlier experiments with e-formats: in 2000 he released the first ever mass market ebook, Riding the Bullet, which was downloaded by half a million readers in a couple of days. He followed this up with the story of a supernatural vine, The Plant, which he published in ebook format using an honour system asking readers to pay for each instalment.
To read Alison Flood's full coverage link here to The Guardian online.

And for a report from the NYT on the launch and big push by Amazon for the new Kindle, and what it means for its competitors link here.

And here is the Kindle best-seller list for the week ending February 7 - no numbers given!
Note - publishers quoted are the US publishers.

1. Run for Your Life - James Patterson (Little, Brown)
2. Bone Crossed - Patricia Briggs (Ace)
3. The Shack - William P. Young (Windblown)
4. The Reader - Bernhard Schlink (Vintage)
5. Plum Spooky - Janet Evanovich (St. Martins)
6. The Kindle Cookbook - David Emberson (Rohala)
7. Twilight - Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)
8. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)
9. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)
10. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)