The Long Walk was published in 1979 under Stephen King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman. Because King was already such a prolific novelist, his publishers worried that his considerable output would oversaturate the market and make him less exciting to a reading public. Signet Books thus agreed to publish some of his work under a pseudonym. King created a lengthy biography for Bachman and even used a photo of his agent’s friend for the jacket cover.

The first novel published under the name Bachman was Rage (1977), which depicts a school shooting. Unfortunately, a series of school shooters in the 1980s and 1990s claimed that King’s text influenced them. In 1997, a high school student shot eight peers, and a copy of Rage was found in his locker. King immediately requested that the novel go out of print. The 1985 collection The Bachman Books included the novels Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man; King requested that this collection go out of print too, with the later three novels continuing to be published separately.

As is the case with several texts written by a famous author under a pseudonym, the discovery of the identity of “Bachman” propelled The Long Walk to the bestseller list.