Author Stephen King hates cellphones and won't use them. "They're 21st-century slave bracelets," he said in an interview from his home in Florida late last week.

But tomorrow, Mr. King's marketing team plans to send text messages on his behalf -- to 100,000 cellphone users.

On Jan. 24, the Scribner imprint is publishing Mr. King's new novel, "Cell," about apocalyptic havoc wreaked by cellphones. To promote the dark tale, Scribner has devised an elaborate Web- and cellphone-based marketing campaign.

Scribner will give Mr. King's fans the opportunity to buy ring tones of his voice. Selling ring tones is a popular avenue for making money in the music industry. It hasn't previously been tried in the book business because the idea of a novelist's voice droning from your mobile wouldn't seem to have much mainstream appeal. Mr. King, however, is one of the few writers with enough of a following to give him a shot at making it a viable enterprise.

The promotion also highlights the growing emphasis on advertising that consumers can respond to directly, which marketers think is more effective than ads which are viewed passively.

The publisher is printing 1.1 million copies of "Cell," a large number at a time when many best-selling authors are spending less time on the charts. Scribner is an imprint of CBS's Simon & Schuster book-publishing arm.

"Cell" tells the story of a mysterious pulse, sent to every operating cellphone, that incites many who hear it to go on a murderous rampage. A small percentage of the world's population remains unaltered -- they call themselves "normies" -- but their future is very much in doubt.

The text-ad that thousands of cellphone subscribers will receive reads: "The next call you take may be your last. ... Join the Stephen King VIP Club at www.cellthebook.com." Each of the recipients agreed to receive such promotional messages. A marketing firm helped Scribner target the messages to a specific demographic group -- 18 to 54 years old, 55 percent male -- that is seen as likely buyers of the book.

The "VIP Club" features trivia contests, polls and sweepstakes. Members will also receive an audio message via cellphone from Mr. King on Jan. 24th in which he says: "Hear the back story on my novel 'Cell.' Visit cellthebook.com to play my exclusive audio clip."

Those who sign up for the "VIP Club" will also be offered the chance to buy wallpaper for their cellphones for $1.99 (the design is an image of the front cover of the novel), as well as two different ring tones, each for $1.99.

One ring tone consists of Mr. King stating: "Beware. The next call you take may be your last." The second, also in Mr. King's voice, says: "It's okay, it's a normie calling."

"This gives us an opportunity to offset the cost of our ad campaign by creating a potential revenue stream," says Sue Fleming, marketing director at Simon & Schuster. "With an author like Stephen King, it could be huge."

Usually, book publishers simply give away promotional items through their author Web sites, says a rival publisher, David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus Books LLC, a unit of Washington private-equity firm Perseus LLC. "You need a clever promotion and a significant hook, which they've got in Stephen King, to make this work," he says.

Scribner says a number of major carriers are participating in the promotion. A spokesman for T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, confirmed their participation, for example. The ring tones and wallpaper, however, won't be available to all cellphone users, including subscribers of Verizon Wireless.

Scribner plans to broaden the campaign later this week. Between Jan. 19 and Jan. 21 it will promote the VIP Club in an ad on Yahoo. The publisher is also podcasting a Stephen King download on Jan. 31 in which the author discusses the writing of "Cell." Members of his VIP Club can access it exclusively for a week. Then the podcast will be made available to online retailers and at Simonsays.com, Simon & Schuster's own Web site, for free downloading. The VIP club will be operation for eight weeks.

Will Mr. King's messages startle any fans? "The point is to intrigue them," says Carolyn Reidy, publisher of Simon & Schuster's Adult Publishing Group. "Maybe they should be scared. Stephen King writes horror novels, and the basic plot involves people who are listening to their cell phones."

Mr. King, 58, sees cellphones as an impingement on personal freedom. "If you've got one, it becomes addictive," he said in the interview. "Also, people can always find you."

The veteran horror writer says he got the idea for his new novel while watching a beautifully dressed woman standing outside a New York hotel, talking on her cellphone. What would happen, he wondered, if she suddenly received a message telling her to kill people? "I cruise the landscape, looking for things that would make people nervous," he says.

He doesn't pretend to know whether his fans will buy his ring tones. He did try to convince his publisher to record a ring tone that consisted solely of Mr. King saying, "Don't answer it, don't answer it." But Scribner rejected the idea, he says.