Ur (novella)

"Ur"
Cover of the original Kindle release
Author	Stephen King
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Published in	Amazon Kindle
Publication type	E-book
Publisher	Amazon.com
Publication date	February 12, 2009

Ur is a novella by Stephen King. It was written exclusively for the Amazon Kindle platform, and became available for download on February 12, 2009. An audiobook edition was released on February 16, 2010 by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by Holter Graham. Ur was collected in King's 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, heavily revised.

King said, speaking about Ur:

The delivery mechanism to my mind is secondary for me as a writer. [...] But I did this once before with a story called Riding the Bullet and I never had so many guys in suits come up to me and ask me questions. But they didn't want to know about the story, they didn't want to know about the process, they wanted to know about the delivery system, but to me that's secondary. [...] I think people will be more interested in the business aspect of [Ur] than they will in the story. I would never have agreed to it if I didn't think it was a pretty good story. I decided I would like to write a story for the Kindle, but only if I could do one about the Kindle. Gadgets fascinate me, particularly if I can think of a way they might get weird. I had previously written about homicidal cars, sinister computers, and brain-destroying mobile phones; at the time the Amazon request came in, I'd been playing with an idea about a guy who starts getting e-mails from the dead. The story I wrote, Ur, was about an e-reader that can access books and newspapers from alternate worlds. I realized I might get trashed in some of the literary blogs, where I would be accused of shilling for Jeff Bezos & Co., but that didn't bother me much; in my career, I have been trashed by experts, and I'm still standing.

King's agent, Ralph Vicinanza, has stated that downloads of the novella at Amazon.com have reached "five figures" in about three weeks, while also denying the novella is an infomercial for the Kindle. King's publisher, Scribner, released Ur as an audiobook on February 16, 2010. In an interview in October 2010, King stated that he did not write the novella for the money: "I did it because it was interesting. I'm fairly prolific. It took three days, and I've made about $80,000. You can't get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It's ridiculous."