In July 2000 began the electronic (self-)publishing of The Plant, an
epistolary novel by Stephen King, who was the first author of best-
sellers to make such a bet. Stephen King started his digital experiment
a little earlier, with the distribution in March 2000 of his short
story Riding the Bullet, which was downloaded 400,000 times during the
first 24 hours. All this was followed with a lot of interest by the
media. Then Stephen King created a website to self-publish his novel
The Plant in episodes. The chapters were published at regular intervals
and could be downloaded in several formats (PDF, OeB, HTML, TXT). After
the publication of the sixth chapter in December 2000, the author
decided to step down and stop this experiment, because more and more
readers were downloading the chapters without paying for them. Stephen
King went on with digital experiments though, but this time in
partnership with his publisher.