SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Internet distribution of Stephen King’s latest serial
novel, The Plant, reached 100,000 completed downloads in the first two days
of the launch, setting a new record for distribution of the author’s work and
reaching a highly respectable number for the digital delivery of books.
“We’re a leading distributor of digital intellectual property and Stephen King
is a pioneering author in digitally delivering his books directly to readers and
we are proud to be facilitating the successful launch of The Plant,” said
Antonio Salerno, CEO of Conxion Corporation, the integrated Internet
Infrastructure provider contracted by Radiant Ideas, King’s Internet
gurus.
King’s customers, even on modems, are able to receive the book within
two minutes and customers on broadband receive the installments within
15 seconds. The download is being delivered in one 145kB file in order to
put
less stress on customers’ computing systems. When King released a novella
called Riding the Bullet over the Internet last March, customers had
problems
downloading the single large, encrypted file, which resulted in a high
volume
of aborted downloads. This time, King eliminated the encryption and created
a
smaller file size.
“We’re accustomed to shipping five to 100 Mb files routinely from our
customers to their users and Mr. King’s team figured out how to do it in a
small and tight package so that it had almost no impact on our backbone,”
said
Mr. Salerno.
“We are very pleased with the quality of service we have seen from
Conxion,” said Bill Thornton, president, Radiant Ideas. “People are
downloading this novel easily, and perhaps more importantly downloading it
quickly — even over 28.8 connections. Many of the people downloading
The Plant are new to downloading and we knew that the delivery had to be as
seamless as possible. We chose Conxion based on the high level of service
we’ve seen from other downloads hosted on their servers, and that’s what
we’ve
seen.”
“Stephen King was very optimistic about people paying to download this
novel,” Thornton continued. “At Radiant Ideas, we were skeptical that
people would pay. But Stephen knows his fans better than anyone else, and we’re
seeing a very high percentage of payments to downloads. This ‘experiment’
shows that in spite of all the ways the Internet has changed our lives, the
fundamental aspect of paying for someone’s work has remained valuable. Part
of its success can be attributed to a system that is easy and quick to use.”
