The book in question was Hearts in Atlantis, Mr. King's paean to that mythical period called the '60s. It's a brilliant work, one that I highly recommend, but that's not the reason for this article.

You see, a week or so after I download Hearts, Stephen King stunned the publishing world by releasing a short story, Riding the Bullet, as an ebook, and as an ebook only. For the first time in history, a major author chose to release a new work (of this length) exclusively in electronic form, and people responded in droves. Amazon, who was offering the book free of charge, had server problems, and numerous customers were turned away. Barnes & Noble was also giving the book away free, if only for the first day. However, for those of us who have the pleasure of using a Windows CE device, there is only one real vendor: Peanut Press at http://www.peanutpress.com. For $2.50, Peanut Press is offering Riding the Bullet in both Windows CE and Palm OS formats for reading on those respective devices, as shown in Figure A. I had no problems purchasing, downloading, and installing the ebook on my Cassiopeia.

FIGURE A

Stephen King is the first major author to release a work of this length exclusively as an ebook. Click picture for a larger image.

A unique reading experience
Reading a book on a Windows CE palm-sized PC (soon to be Pocket PC) is an experience akin to no other. There's another article on the Pocket PC elsewhere in this issue, so be sure to check it out. If I didn't know better, I would assume that these devices were designed specifically as book readers. The sharp screens with their high-resolution displays, the toggles and thumb wheels for changing pages, the built-in backlight for night-time reading, and the ability to change font size and style are great advantages. Also, you can carry multiple books in one device, without the added bulk and weight of all that paper. All these things combined make ebooks, dare I say, better than traditional books.

Yeah, it all adds up to one sweet reading device. So sweet, in fact, that the new PocketPC will include Microsoft Reader and ClearText, two programs that may just change reading as we know it. I know that sounds like I'm sitting way out on a fragile limb, but ebooks on palm-sized devices are just that good. Really.