Things have recently heated up over on the Wylie-Merrick blog on the topic of advertising in books. Scott Jensen, a reader of the blog, was invited to post his ideas about the future of e-publishing, which in his opinion will mostly involve books being free to consumers.
We’re all familiar with the phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” but I think we often forget what it really means. “Free to the consumer” for example isn’t quite true. In Scott Jensen’s view of future publishing, advertisers will bear the cost of producing and distributing the e-books. Scott seems to like the idea and has some interesting concepts for actually integrating the advertising into the book-reading experience.
Nothing against Scott or his ideas for his own writing, but for me, as a reader … it gives me the willies. While a consumer downloading these books wouldn’t pay any cash for the book, he/she would pay in time spent viewing advertising between chapters. Like commercials on television. Because we all love commercials on television, right? I was called an “elitist” for my hatred of commercials, but I know I’m not alone.
Almost since the beginning of television, people have been devising ways to avoid watching commercials. They go to the kitchen for a snack, let the dog out to pee, or myriad other household chores that only require two minutes. The VCR allowed people to simply fast forward through commercials. Tivo does the same. The incredible popularity of television shows on DVD makes it clear that lots of people enjoy watching TV without the commercials.
Are all those commercial-skipping people elitists? Are they all wrong? Would they be joyfully converted to enjoying commercials in books? You know, the books that vast numbers of Americans can’t be bothered to check out “free of charge” from the library now? Would those books be more attractive with ads in them?
It has been suggested that “free” books, paid for by advertisers, would be beneficial to poor people. The masses, if you will. I don’t get it. Seriously. I’m not being snarky, but I don’t get how e-books with commercials in them would make more books available to poor people. Poor people can already get books from the library. Even dead broke homeless people can get a library card where I am.
When I was a kid, being raised by my hard-working single mother, we always got our books from the library. There wasn’t some Big, Evil, Greedy Publisher lording it over us because we were poor, twirling his mustache and saying, “No books for you, dirty little Okie.” That’s why I find it hard to imagine businesses as Duddley-Do-Right, come to save the day with their advertising dollars. Corporations advertise to sell more product, in order to benefit their shareholders, not to provide a public service.
The thing we don’t often think about is what’s being sold. When a television broadcaster sells advertising time to a business, the business isn’t buying x minutes of broadcast time. The business is buying x viewers. Advertising is valued based on the number of expected viewers for the time slot. So if I’m watching television, the advertisers are buying my time. They’re buying me. To be honest, that creeps me out a little. Especially if I carry that feeling over to reading.
For Sale
I love books. Right or wrong, I trust books. When I’m reading a good story, I’m vulnerable in a way I never have been while watching TV. The last thing I want is to have companies pitch their goods and services to me while I’m in my wonderful-happy-reading place.
This isn’t just speculation on my part. When I was about eight or nine, I bought a book at a garage sale that hooked me like a fish. It’s a fairly famous fantasy book, part of a trilogy, which I didn’t know at the time. All I knew was that from the first sentence, I was in love with that book. It was an older paperback, and some of you will remember that in the late sixties and early seventies some paperbacks came with advertisements. Hard cover stock, often in full color, bound into the middle of the book.
This book that I fell in love with had one of those glossy, color ads. Right in the middle, stuck between two pages of a scene in which the main character came to terms with the fact that she was responsible for the deaths of two men, and that if she didn’t act, she would be responsible for the death of a third. Very intense reading for a nine-year-old. Would she save this man, trapped in the dark and afraid?
I turned the page and there. There was the ad. For cigarettes. Ah, yes, those were the days, when you could advertise cigarettes almost anywhere. Including in books that were on the cusp between young adult/adult. In a fit of annoyance, I ripped the ad out, but I still remember clearly what brand of cigarettes it was, what the ad looked like. I still have that book, the cover torn and utterly worn down at the corners, and the spine warped by the little raised ridge of glossy cardstock where I amputated the ad. Where I declined to be sold to the high bidder.
Bryn Greenwood 
Heavens! I remember buying books with cigarette adverts stuck in the middle of them. For some reason, it ‘cheapened’ the book for me. It made me think that it was a lesser book than those on the shelves that didn’t have an advert.
The reason I love books is that I can lose myself in a good story and I can pick and choose when I put the book down and wander into the kitchen for a snack or let the big whiny dog out.
I’m having a hard enough time adjusting to the concept of e-books, I sure as hell don’t want stonking great commercials stuck in the middle of them. 😦
You’re not an elitist; you’re sane. Really, have these people never heard of libraries? When I was young and reading multiple books a week, and when I was in grad school and couldn’t afford to buy books, I was at my library every week.
Must admit, when I read your first paragraph my first thought was this was going to be about product placement in books, which is another topic that gives me the hives.
Even more insidious is the product placement that’s already in books, especially those aimed at certain audiences (chick lit and young adult especially). All those references to various products and designers and so forth – a few of them are there for verisimilitude, but many of them are bought and sold, ads embedded in the text itself. Ugh.
Ewwwww! Product placement. Even more evil than regular advertising. I understand that advertisers have to advertise, but when broadcast and publishing media take the relationship to the next step of showcasing products within the entertainment… *shudder* That was when I stopped watching The Office. They tried to make the product placement seem ironic, but when you’re still advertising real products for which you received real money, there’s no irony. Ironic was when Arrested Development played at product placement by filming in a Burger King.
I stumbled upon the discussion at Wylie-Merrick. The level of anger exhibited by some of the pro-ad people was kind of astounding. I wonder why they think that (I am assuming) whereas they haven’t been able to crack publishing with the current model, they will be successful in this brave new paradigm. My guess is that such a system would lead to less quality than we have now because of who would probably be doing the filtering.
Right on, sistah! Access is not the issue. If it was, said advertisers would be ponying up to give free e-readers (or their analogue counterparts) to the wee wittle poor people.
I live in a city where the public library is vast, its access free to those who cannot afford it, and for those who can, a measly $14 fee per family for the whole year. But an e-reader, which will work for one person alone? $400. How is that going to improve access?
And I watch, perhaps, an hour of TV a week. I wait until the series I love come out on DVD and then I buy them. Can’t stand commercials. Won’t be bought. Grrr.
Bryn, if that makes you an elitist, then show me where I sign up for the club. I hate commercials. I don’t like them in my TV shows, though I learned early on to accept that they weren’t going to go away –but I don’t think I’d be willing to buy a book if I knew every chapter was going to be introduced by Colgate Toothpaste, Jim Beam, or KY. It would take something precious away from the experience of reading.
Plus, where does that kind of thing stop, once you get it started? Do certain types of ads get paired with certain types of books? If Medieval Times is on the first page of every one of my (hypothetically pubbed) chapters, do I need to tiptoe around saying anything negative about them publicly?
–Okay, so maybe all this time-zone hopping has made me more doomsayer-ey than usual, but this whole concept makes me squick.
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I couldn’t agree more with this post. What a horrid idea.
I echo everything Amy said.
And I wanted to mention this could lead to some very dangerous areas. How often have we heard of advertisers backing out because of a “controversial” television episode?
What would stop an advertiser from doing the same because they didn’t like certain content in a book?
Just to try and even out the overwhelmingly negative reaction from everyone, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment. I know that readers are down by a long way on their heyday, but comic-books have always had adverts in them, and some of them are of equal – if not better – writing quality than many, many bestsellers. I would go as far as stating that comics are the equal of novels in every regard.
Now, do you feel that they are lessened by the fact that they contain adverts, or do the adverts exist as a memorial to a specific point in time. In a few years after publication, they serve as a reminder of the date of publication, and in many cases are wonderful. Look at the DC titles with Atari games advertised from the eighties. The ads are almost like modern art. I love them.
Television has existed with ads since the television was taken up as a proper platform, and I can’t imagive that programs and adverts will ever be separated from each other. They go together in more ways than just the medium. Television shows exist around the ads, which play to the cliffhangers just before each ad break, and the shows benefit from the artifical breaking of continuing story into small chunks.
Saying that books are ‘special’ or on a different playing field is surprising to me, especially as I have seen – first hand – the way in which ads are being placed into computer games. Anything which pumps more money into the industry should be looked at from a distance, without automatic judgements being made concerning ‘appropriate’ use of the well-worn format.
If it is good enough for comics, magazines, television, computer games and the internet, then there must be something in the idea…
On a purely personal level, I don’t suppose that I would be too pleased about opening a book and finding adverts, but if you look at the backs of many books being published right now, then you will find ‘house ads’ placed by the publisher to shift their own books. Is this any different? Is the content of the ads so important?
Hi Bigwords88,
I like comic books. And agree that they certainly don’t get the respect they deserve.
My problem with the idea of advertising isn’t so much that I fear that it could cheapen a book, but as I mentioned before, the fear of advertisers controlling what we put in our books. If rich and famous tv producers have to bow down to advertisers, imagine what midlist novelists might suffer.
@Bigwords88, the people who are proposing these changes aren’t discussing placing ads at the back, where the experience of story isn’t disrupted. They’re advocating inserts at each chapter break. Would that change your devil’s advocate position somewhat?
And while I appreciate your comment about the comic book medium, I don’t think it’s entirely the same. A closer parallel, I believe, would be the insertion of an ad right into the middle of a movie. Would that be acceptable to the masses?
When it comes to ads being objects d’art, while I appreciate the sentiment, I doubt you felt like that at the time. Nor did your parents, as they understood them to be a source of future nagging, and cleverly designed to separate you from your paper route money.
What happened to a culture that embraced art for art’s sake? Must everything be about the vehicle for commerce? Should my child’s first experience of Charlotte’s Web become associated with fondness for Lucky Charms?
Is it acceptable that medical textbooks come complete with corporate branding? Do you want a world where industry determines what characters/ideas/settings are acceptable? (And let’s not even get into the issue that a writer – who already has no control over title, cover art, or publication date – will be able to pick from amongst their sponsors.)
I can’t walk my dog, purchase my food, or become informed about local news without being subjected to advertising. Please! Don’t take away my books.
I HATE adverts in books. Those rip out ads you talk about just annoyed me, pissed me off, and why would I want to buy anything that interrupted my reading? Now the back of comic books with the ads for novelty glasses and fake poo…those were different. But ads in books? THumbs down!
Where appropriate I can see the idea working. As long as the products are carefully vetted, and are of a nature which doesn’t badly affect the book, then the idea is sound. Think of books as a whole, and don’t concentrate too deeply on novels per se. Factual books could be the forefront of the ad revenue stream, and I have absolutely no problem reading a film guide with ads for DVD clubs (the 5 DVDs for $1 type), or whatever.
Think of the possibilities for small companies who specialize in health foods putting ads in a healthy eating book, or one of the numerous music books containing ads for specialist CD companies. This is where the first ads will be seen in the idea is going to be rolled out, and I assure you that publishers will be gauging opinion to make sure that they will not lose sales.
I cave on the comics ads being deliberate ploys to separate children from their money. You remember the ‘trunk of soldiers’? It was a tiny metal box with tinier figures, and I had never felt so ripped off. So yeah, there is a danger impressionable minds will get the notion that the publisher condones (or actively endorses) the products being shilled.
Maybe the feedback received from the initial stages will give the publishers time to consider, but there are options which might not be apparent at first: There could be two editions of each book chosen to contain ads, with ad-free editions retailing for a couple of bucks more. Is that so bad? And bear in mind the collecting mentality that says “I have to have every edition”, so for every book with multiple printings you’ll see two sales instead of one.
I’m not condemning the experiment until it has been proven to be a failure, and that will only come when the books have been printed.
I think I’ve said enough on this subject already, but I’ll leave you with this thought – When many of the books of the Victorian age were initially published in partwork, the pages of the magazines were filled with ads. I’m sure there were people who had never read Sherlock Holmes (or whatever) without the ads. Just a thought…
The comic book issue is interesting, because it calls out so clearly the “intended audience” aspect of advertising. For example, of the comic books I read with any regularity in my younger days, the ads were largely amusing to me, because I wasn’t their intended audience. They didn’t annoy me the way ads in novels did.
And I find it interesting that it’s primarily from a reader’s perspective, rather than a writer’s perspective, that most people find the idea of advertising in novels so offensive. As a writer, I’ve barely even begun to consider how I would feel about advertisements in *my* books. (Of course, for Ugly and the Beast, I try to imagine what ads would be appropriate: drug paraphernalia, guns, and criminal attorneys…)
For me, I don’t think I would be as turned off by non-fiction books with advertising. Perhaps because I don’t often feel an emotional connection to non-fiction. That whole vulnerability issue. Also, in many ways, we’re used to advertising in non-fiction. For example, I don’t think anyone is surprised by recipe collections that specify particular brands of ingredients, or how-to books that are written with the intention of being used with specific products.
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