January 2013 | Nate Pedersen

Sale of Rare Stephen King Book Will Help the Needy

An anonymous donor gifted a rare Stephen King book to the Emmaus Center, a homeless shelter in Ellsworth, Maine. The book will be sold to raise much needed funds for the shelter.

The book is a limited-edition copy of The Regulators, which King wrote under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. The book was published in 1996 by Dutton / Penguin, who also commissioned 552 copies of a special, limited edition. Five hundred limited edition copies were bound by Gregg Campbell of The Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minnesota*. (Not to be confused with the "deluxe edition" of fifty-two copies, complete with spent Winchester bullets, bound by Claudia Cohen and published by Charnel House, a publisher we recently profiled in the magazine).

regulators.jpgOne of the five hundred limited editions made its way to Maine after the death of Tim Clark, another Minnesota bookbinder who, according to the Bangor Daily News, also worked on the book. The person who inherited the book from Clark decided to anonymously donate it to the Emmaus Center last month to help with fundraising. When Stephen King learned about the donation, he volunteered to sign the book to increase its re-sale value.

Current online prices for signed copies of the special edition of The Regulators run between $1250 and $2000.

The book is presently on display at Scottie's Bookhouse in Hancock, Maine. The owner of the bookshop, Michael Riggs, is accepting bids for the book on behalf of the homeless shelter. Bids will be accepted until January 31, at which point the book will be sold to the highest bidder and the funds donated to the Emmaus Center.

If you're interested in bidding, Scottie's Bookhouse can be reached at 207-667-6834.

*Editor's note: An earlier version of this post did not give proper credit to Gregg Campbell, the bookbinder in charge of the edition shown above.