 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another Stephen King video. I believe I'm calling this series My Life as a Stephen King fan. Today I just want to sit back, relax, and chat with you about how... In the last one I talked about my collections. In this one I want to talk about some of the ways I collected over the years. But the majority of this video is going to be about the Stephen King Library. I believe it's called. It's thestevenkinglibrary.com. Sadly it is no longer in business. From what I can tell the main page has only an option to make a payment on your account. But when I went over to stevenking.com after several hours of searching the internet over the past two weeks, I've only come across really one other person talking about it that wasn't actively trying to, I guess, not promote. But yeah, I guess that is the case, promote. Because they did a big push with bloggers and whatnot back in 2013. And I saw several posts from people who the Stephen King Library had reached out to asking them to help promote it to sell the calendar, which we'll talk about here in a second. But on top of that I can't find anything saying when they started. So if anybody in the community can find out for me, I would vastly appreciate it. Just leave your comments down there in the doobly-doo. If you knew the channel that's either the description or the comment section. But with the Stephen King Library you paid one fee and they sent you a new Stephen King book every single month. Well, not a new one. In fact, the last thing I heard on the Stephen King website, the official Stephen King website, is that they had lost the rights to do everything from the outsider on. So it looks like that might be the reason that they closed their doors. But there's also a Stephen King Library from Simon and Schuster. So I don't know if that has taken over. I didn't do much research into that because I wanted to focus on the Stephen King Library at the Stephen King Library dot com. Or maybe it's just Stephen King Library dot com. But there is that payment wall. I do know that the last book that I tried to get through them was the Green Mile Hardcover, which I still haven't gotten. I have the first editions which are all in, I don't know if you guys can see them, but they're up here underneath the Salem's Lot hat. Yeah, they're all up here. Those are the first editions that I bought. In fact, that's the oldest. As far as me buying them new, that's the oldest in my collection. And you can see why in the video prior to this one in the series. Not the video that was uploaded before this one. Anyways, so you get one of these every single year. It was the Stephen King Library desk calendar. This one is from 2014. I think this is the last one that I tried to get. This is the last year that I had it before I ended up cancelling because they sent me a letter saying that they didn't have any more copies of the Green Mile Hardcover in stock. Now, I just wanted that for my shelves. Everything you see up here on these shelves are first editions or they're limited editions, except for this carry over here. My first first to carry is in a lot of safety deposit box because of the hurricanes and everything I've been through. I still live in Central Alabama. And until I move from Central Alabama, my 25th anniversary it and my first first to carry will stay in safe deposit boxes. If you don't know, this office that I shoot in, the studio, whatever you want to call it, is not connected to my house. Now, all of the stuff back here I have doubles of because I bought doubles for so long before ebooks. So I have doubles of everything except for what's new. But all that stuff is in storage. That stuff is kept away. So if anything happens to this collection that I have here for the show, then I have backups. But at one point in time, the only option I had financially to get first editions, and they weren't first editions, but to get the original covers, they were, who knows, how many printings they had gone through at this point. Things like Firestarter and Night Shift and things like that that are usually tend to be hard to come by. Those books, I end up replacing the Stephen King Library ones later on in life. But mainly, I built up my collection just for show from the Stephen King Library. I think I got 15 to 16 books there. Those books are worth absolutely nothing. But they are a high quality book club edition. They are not the smaller copies like they used to be back in the during the double day book club editions, which is a funny side note because back when double day was doing their book club and they sent the Stephen King book club copies out, those books were the same size. Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Stand, The Shining, and I believe Night Shift were all the same size. The first editions were the same size as the book club editions, but they were first editions. It all depends on the anomalies that you find on the books. Like with The Shining, there's R24. I always get this confused. It might be R42 on a certain page and The Shining lets you know that it's the first edition. With, let's see here, Salem's Lot, it's the price difference. I think it was $8.99, marked down to $7.99 that they changed, but also the true first edition has the typo Father Cody in the description instead of Father Callahan. But back to the Stephen King Library. I had a lot of fun every single year, well every single month getting a new hardcover from my shelves that then I could replace. The reason why I spent the money to build up that collection, it was a bit of self-care, I guess. I had lost, at this point in time in my life, I had lost my Stephen King collection twice. My first edition Stephen King collection twice. Once in 1995 and then another time, I can't remember the year. I've kind of blocked out this period of my life because of drug addiction and all different kinds of things. Up until about the time when my first child was born, all that stuff is muddy up until 2005, but there was another hurricane that came through. I think it was Igor or Ivan that wiped out my collection again. So the only thing that I have from that time are those Green Mile paperbacks, and that's only because when Igor or Ivan, I can't remember which one it was, that came all the way up into Montgomery if you want to check yourself. When that one came up, it flooded the storage facility that I had it on, but those books in particular were sitting on top of, in a smaller box, on top of everything else, literally the only box that didn't get destroyed. But with this one, I wanted my collection back, and the quickest way I could think to do it other than getting stuff off eBay for dirt cheap, they weren't first editions, getting them dirt cheap was through the Stephen King Library, because I believe it was 14 or 1999, and most of the stuff that you found on eBay was, and now I wanted clean copies. So those of you out there going, you can find a decent reading copy. No, I wanted a pretty copy for my shelves, and these were brand new books, freshly printed. They just weren't first editions. They weren't even, they weren't anywhere near first printings. They had the same covers as the first editions, but they weren't the same thing. If you guys want to have a chat about that down there in the doobly-do, what the difference is between a first edition and a first printing, we can do that also, because not all first editions are first printings. But anyways, another thing is, I have a little bit of a story that I've told several times over the course of several videos, and this is the last time I'm going to tell it, but my first experience with the Stephen King Library is, at one point in time, when I was a kid, my early teenage years, from about the time I was 10 to the time I was 14, my mom, my dad never worked. My dad lived off my mother for 25 years. He cut grass to pay for his beers and beer and cigarette when she cut him off for that, those things, but my mom worked anywhere from two to three jobs at a time, nursing, sitting with people, hospital, all that stuff. She worked for Kaiser Permanente out in Fontana, California. But at one point in time, she didn't have a whole lot of money, so she couldn't afford the first editions off the shelf, and it was just much easier for her to set it and forget it with one of her credit cards, as one of the things that got her in debt with the Stephen King Library. So she set it and forgot it. And they would come in the mail every single month, and I believe back in the day, different books came also. I think there was a Stephen King, the Stephen King Library offered other books handpicked by Stephen King. Nowadays, or recently, like in 2014, when I have, from the time I have this desk calendar, that wasn't the case. I know they only offered the Stephen King books. But every single month, you would get a Stephen King book. And in 2014, I remember you could click the ones that you already had, so they wouldn't send you those. But back in the day, I want to say about between 90 and 93. I know this for a fact for 93. Every single month, they would send you a new book, and his newest book, the Loris Claiborne, had just come out. I went out to the, this is how I started my Stephen King fandom. I went out to the mailbox to get the mail after I had gotten home from school. And I found a Stephen King Library box. It had, of course, the Stephen King Library on it with the bill on the front and everything. And I took it inside, and I sat there staring at it for a little while, and I decided to finally open it. Because at this point in my life, my mother would not let me read Stephen King. I wasn't allowed to read anything but goosebumps, fear street, scary stories to tell in the dark, and novelizations of movies that she had already seen. So when this came, she wasn't home. Dad was asleep on the couch. She used to always fall asleep watching the Cubs. We never lived in Chicago, but the man was a die-hard Cubs fan. I decided to go ahead and open it. So my first, my first situation, my first experience with Stephen King was a theft. I literally stole my mother's book. I easily, not easily, but I eased it open, breaking the glue. So I, because I had plans to repackage it, which I eventually did, and then put it back in the mailbox. She never noticed. She wasn't paying attention. She was working so much. I don't even think at this point she was reading Stephen King anymore. But I opened it up and I read the book at night with a flashlight over the course of three nights. I just devoured that book. It's still one of my favorite Stephen King books, but that experience alone made me a Stephen King fan. After that, I tried to get my hands on as much as possible. I would walk down to the thrift store to buy, because they didn't care who bought books back then. They still don't, technically. You can go to Barnes & Noble if you're eight years old and buy a Stephen King book. It's not like video games. And I honestly don't feel that there should be an age limit on the King books, because the way he writes, it's vague enough that a kid, a child that doesn't understand adult concepts like sex and things like that, they're not going to understand what's going on. But with an adult, of course, they're going to catch it. So the only way you're going to catch it is if you have experience with those things or you've heard about those things. So I don't think there is an age that is too young, other than maybe literally not being able to read. Y'all can disagree with me down in the doobly-doo. But with my mom and that collection, eventually she finally had to cancel everything. She went bankrupt and we moved to Alabama. We got to Alabama and that's when the hurricane happened and we lost her collection of first editions. She had firsts of Carrie. She had been buying these books brand new as soon as they came out from Carrie on. So she had Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Stan, all those early books. She had brand new. And I still remember that collection. In fact, I have a picture of it that I believe I showed in the last video. If not, I will definitely show it the next time I do one of these videos. But with the Stephen King Library, I have a couple questions for you guys. Did any of you join the Stephen King Library? Did any of you remember the Stephen King Library? Did any of you use this library to complete your collections? Like I said, the third time I did my collection, I rebuilt it with using the Stephen King Library and eBay and some N.A. books and a couple other places. And of course, loads of you guys have helped me complete my collection. Wayne, Cammie, Sarah, all you guys, if I missed anybody, I apologize. There are so many of you who have sent me first editions. Some of you I only know by your screen names, which is unfortunate. But I thank you guys so much for helping me out with that. But that's how I've rebuilt my collection so far now. And luckily in the past two to three years, ever since I started this channel, I have been financially stable enough to actually go out and hunt these first editions and get the special collectors editions and all that stuff. All this stuff is pretty much new to me. It's with all this stuff is within the last five years that you see on these shelves. So if you're worried about, you know, collecting or you're worried about finding your, well, I don't know, your great white whale, no, your white elephant. I don't know what you want to call it. But if you're worried about those things, all I have to tell you is be patient. It comes around. It really does. I mean, my copy of my first edition of the stand, my first, first, it's the original 800 page. It is a first edition and not the book club edition. My first, first of the stand I found for $35 on eBay, just a fluke. I tried it out. The guy was like, first, first, I guess nobody believed him because he only had the cover showing. And it's in terrible condition. It's ratty or what not. But yeah. And it's the, even the, even the spine is kind of, I hate touching this. That's why I haven't read this version yet. Another thing, if anybody out there has a paperback copy of the original one for a decent price, I need one. The original 800 page version of the stand. Just that one. That's the one that I'm looking for. But anyways, I'm going to wrap this up because I really don't have anything else to say on the matter. But down there in the comments section with these videos, these discussion videos, that's why I upload these videos to tell, to tell you my story and to get your story as well. If you just want to talk about Stephen King, that kind of thing, then that's what we'll do. Comment down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another Stephen King video. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!