However, dire predictions of the end of publishing as we know it are probably premature.
Someone is wrong.
My guess is that despite tepid early sales, King's online serial may be a success over time, although I am very interested in seeing what will happen if payments fail to reach the 75 percent threshold King set as a prerequisite for further installments. Even if King's direct marketing experiment succeeds, the fact that this is a new approach has garnered millions of dollars in free advertising, which is certainly driving a major percentage of the book's sales. That is the advantage that publishers hold. King is a workhorse of a writer, churning out books at an alarming rate that makes one wonder if he ever sleeps. Most of his contemporaries publish less often and are probably less inclined to entrust one of their precious works to an unproven publishing method.