Stephen King on Your Cellphone
Posted on January 18, 2006
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Stephen King told reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg that he hates cellphones and won't use them -- which is interesting, given the fact that his new novel, Cell is all about cellphones and a very evil plan which utilizes the devices to control the users.
Author Stephen King hates cellphones and won't use them. "They're 21st-century slave bracelets," he said in an interview from his home in Florida late last week. But tomorrow, Mr. King's marketing team plans to send text messages on his behalf -- to 100,000 cellphone users. On Jan. 24, the Scribner imprint is publishing Mr. King's new novel, "Cell," about apocalyptic havoc wreaked by cellphones. To promote the dark tale, Scribner has devised an elaborate Web- and cellphone-based marketing campaign.As part of the book promotion, Scribner is selling personalized cellphone ringtones featuring Mr. King saying either: "Beware. The next call you take may be your last" or "It's okay, it's a normie calling."Scribner will give Mr. King's fans the opportunity to buy ring tones of his voice. Selling ring tones is a popular avenue for making money in the music industry. It hasn't previously been tried in the book business because the idea of a novelist's voice droning from your mobile wouldn't seem to have much mainstream appeal. Mr. King, however, is one of the few writers with enough of a following to give him a shot at making it a viable enterprise.
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"Cell" tells the story of a mysterious pulse, sent to every operating cellphone, that incites many who hear it to go on a murderous rampage. A small percentage of the world's population remains unaltered -- they call themselves "normies" -- but their future is very much in doubt.
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The veteran horror writer says he got the idea for his new novel while watching a beautifully dressed woman standing outside a New York hotel, talking on her cellphone. What would happen, he wondered, if she suddenly received a message telling her to kill people? "I cruise the landscape, looking for things that would make people nervous," he says.
Will readers pay an additional $1.99 for a Stephen King ringtone? It's hard to say whether the trend will catch on, but if it does it's going to be really weird hearing Stephen King talking every time someone's cellphone rings at Starbucks.