As early as 1977, King began publishing novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, both as a way to get out stories that the publishers didn’t think was Kingesque enough to publish and to find out if he could “do it again”; start from scratch and work his way up. Although Bachman did get some attention – one critic said that Thinner was the sort of book King would have written if he’d only could – the books sold a lot better after the truth was revealed. In 1985 King chose to go public with his alter ego, before someone else could prove that he was Bachman.