BOOKS: STEPHEN KING: MONSTER WRITER

• Share

Another chapter is hurtling toward what its author hopes will be a breathtaking close. Storm clouds are gathering, foreshadows lengthening. You are firmly in the grip of what the book jacket avers is "Stephen King's boldest exercise in terror." Your eye skips to the bottom of the page, and this is what you read:

"Thunder rumbled somewhere far off, and unfocused heat lightning flashed in the darkening sky overhead. Bill looked up uneasily, his laughter dying.

"'I'll tell you what, though,' he said. 'I don't like this weather much. Feels like something's gonna happen. Something bad.'

"About that he was right. The bad thing happened right around quarter of ten that night. That was when Percy killed Mr. Jingles."

Mr. Jingles? Say, isn't that a dangerously silly name for a character taking part in a bold exercise in terror? Especially when he's a cute widdle mousey? Well, Stephen King's The Green Mile is an unusual book, and not just because it is being published serially, in 19th century fashion, with the first installment having hit bookstores in March and new volumes following monthly. As risky as any publishing venture that involves Stephen King's name in almost 200-point type--which is to say not so risky at all--The Green Mile has become a publishing sensation, with each of the first five installments having shipped more than 3,000,000 copies, and four of the five currently occupying positions on the New York Times paperback best-seller list, which all but guarantees that the sixth and concluding installment, in stores this week, will also be a hit. It's a nifty trick: at $2.99 a pop for each roughly 90-page paperback book, and $1 more for the half-again-as-long conclusion, readers of the complete Green Mile will have shelled out a total of $18.94 for what would have cost around $6.99 if it had been a normal, one-volume, mass-market paperback.

Brand loyalty like that should be heartening to publishers throughout the book industry, which has suffered a lackluster season for sales. High-profile disappointments have included the well-reviewed Rose by Martin Cruz Smith and Petru Popescu's Almost Adam, a well-hyped (and widely panned) thriller about early man. Some agents even blame the slump on King for crowding competitors off shelves and best-seller lists with his flotilla of Green Mile installments. Others in the industry see more pandemic ills, citing a trend toward increasingly larger advances paid to authors, and the increasingly larger printings that are subsequently ordered in an eager effort to make a profit.