The Bachman book Thinner (1984) sold 28,000 copies during its initial run-and then ten times as many when it was revealed that Bachman was, in fact, King. King concludes that he has yet to find an answer to the 'talent versus luck' question, as he felt he was outed as Bachman too early to know. He says he deliberately released the Bachman novels with as little marketing presence as possible and did his best to 'load the dice against' Bachman. In his introduction to The Bachman Books, King states that adopting the nom de plume Bachman was also an attempt to make sense out of his career and try to answer the question of whether his success was due to talent or luck.

He convinced his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a pseudonym. King therefore wanted to write under another name, in order to increase his publication without over-saturating the market for the King 'brand'. In a footnote to the preface of the more recent Bachman novel Blaze (dated 30 January 2007) King wrote of Rage: 'Now out of print, and a good thing.At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was that an author was limited to one book per year, since publishing more would be unacceptable to the public. The Bachman Books is still in print in the United Kingdom although it no longer contains Rage. The remaining three novels are still in print and are published as separate books. The US editions of this collection and the novel Rage were allowed to go out of print by the author and publisher because of the 1997 Heath High School shooting. Another version with a new introduction 'The Importance of Being Bachman' was published in 1996 to coincide with the release of a new Bachman novel The Regulators. It opens with an introduction by King called 'Why I Was Bachman', explaining how and why he took on the persona of Richard Bachman, as well as how it was found out by the public.

This omnibus also collected these early novels in hardcover for the first time, as they were all originally published in paperback.

The book was released in 1985 after the publication of the first hardcover Bachman novel Thinner in order to introduce Bachman to fans who did not know about King's work under this pseudonym (little of which was still in circulation at the time). It made The New York Times Best Seller List upon its release in 1985. The Bachman Books is a collection of short novels by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman between 19.

The Long Walk by Richard Bachman