The Sower (novel)

The Sower (2009) is the bestselling second novel by American author Kemble Scott, pen name of Scott James, writer of a weekly column about the San Francisco Bay Area published in both The Bay Citizen and The New York Times.

It was the first novel in publishing history to be sold in digital form by Scribd, the document sharing website. The Sower premiered on May 18, 2009, in conjunction with the launch of the company's book selling division, Scribd Store. The author's decision to break with tradition and offer a first release of a new novel as a digital book received international media attention, including coverage in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Los Angeles Times, and on National Public Radio.

The media coverage led to offers to create a printed version. On August 31, 2009, Numina Press published the first hardcover edition, which instantly hit the San Francisco Chronicle's bestsellers list, premiering at #5 for that week.

The Sower is a darkly comic novel that tells the story of a California oil worker who becomes the sole carrier of a manmade virus that appears to cure all diseases. But the only way this cure is passed to others is through sex. Large forces conspire to prevent this from happening by plotting to control or destroy the virus and its host.

Written as a pastiche of the thriller novel genre, the storyline employs international intrigue that takes the plot around the world to exotic locations, including the San Francisco underground, the catacombs of Paris, a yacht on the Amazon river, the Vatican in Rome, and a bedroom in the U.S. presidential retreat Camp David. Villains in the story include highly fictionalized parodies of controversial evangelical minister Rev. Rick Warren, pop star Madonna, and president George W. Bush.

In October 2010, a second digital edition of was released: The Sower 2.0. Debuting exclusively on Scribd, the new version was reimagined by the author and updated with topical references for late 2010. Considered the first version 2.0 of a novel, the second digital edition was also used reading technology from Apture to allow readers to get information on words and phrases in the novel via pop-up screens. On November 15, 2010, a digital edition of The Sower 2.0 became available for Amazon's Kindle.