March 14th, 2000

[3:30 PM] Stephen King Stands Up For Mac Users by Staff Observer Barbara Ashley has relayed to us a story about Stephen King's new novella and his support for the Mac. Mr. King recently announced that he would be releasing a new story in serial form across the Internet (available today), a first for a big-name author. Apparently there are issues with Mac support for the download, but Mr. King has stood up for the Mac. According to Ms. DeFilippo: This might be of interest to other Mac-using Stephen King fans.  King's latest novella, Riding the Bullet, is available only in e-book  format and can be found at the Simon & Schuster site.   When I went to order my copy, there was a notice to Mac users that the book is not available in Mac format, but that it would be at some future, unspecified time.  A few hours after I sent a fairly terse e-mail about this situation to the "official Stephen King" site (http://www.stephenking.com/), I received the following very conciliatory response from King's assistant: "We did not realize that Mac users would not be able to download Riding the Bullet.  As a loyal Mac user himself, Stephen has made sure that this will be corrected and that it won't happen in the future.  Two of the vendors have agreed to work on a Mac solution but Softlock will not have theirs available for another 30 days. In the meantime, Stephen has offered to send a hard copy to any Mac user for the $2.50 charged on-line plus postage.  If you would like to take advantage of this offer, please send us your complete mailing address and we will send you more details. Marsha DeFilippo Assistant to Stephen King" Barbara Ashley You can find more information on the novella at Simon & Schuster's web site. The Mac Observer Spin: We don't care what you might think of Mr. King's writing, this was a stand up move for any author (or any other business for that matter) to make. Mr. King has long been known for his support of the Mac platform, and we offer him a big Mac Observer Salute for making sure his Mac fans were taken care of! Simon & Schuster - Stephen King