Publisher puts the brakes on e-book of Stephen King novel

Add Stephen King to the list of authors who will be in print before pixels. Simon & Schuster today said it will delay the electronic edition of King's next novel, "Under the Dome," until more than a month after the hardcover release.

The publishers of upcoming Sarah Palin and Edward Kennedy memoirs have made similar decisions, apparently fearing that cheaper e-books (typically $9.99) will cannibalize sales of more expensive hardcovers ($25 to $35). The publishing industry has been wringing its hands over mounting threats to its traditional pricing structure — not only e-books but the holiday price war raging between Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target.

Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, said "Under the Dome" will release in hardcover on Nov. 10, but won't be available in e-book form until Dec. 24, at the very tail end of the holiday shopping season. That's a blow to Amazon, which aims to offer books in Kindle form and in hardcover at the same time.

Strangely enough, Stephen King has been a proponent of e-books, and even released a short story called "Ur," exclusively for Kindle earlier this year.

Now his novel "Under the Dome" is ground zero for a lot of the tensions rocking the publishing industry. Not only has it become a test case for e-books, it's one of ten titles at the center of an ecommerce battle between the nation's top retailers. Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target are heavily discounting the books (Wal-Mart is selling them for $8.98 or $8.99; Amazon has them for $9; and Target has them for $8.99). Sears recently jumped into the fray as well.

While price cutting could drive sales on select titles, it could also readjust the value that consumers place on books, upsetting the publishing industry's business model and giving big booksellers like Amazon a lot more leverage over the market.

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About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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