Social impacts the dot-com bubble had without us noticing.

[leahbobet]

Dear Author reports that Amazon has filed for a patent to insert advertising into POD and e-books. Books that included advertisements would be sold for a lower rate than books without. There are, predictably, the beginnings of outrage stirring in the comments.

What I find interesting here, though?

We have, socially, reached a point where major corporations accept implicitly that in order to get you in the same room as advertising, they have to blackmail you. And they attempt to account for that base assumption in their business plans.

It's no longer a social given that advertising is the price you pay for the intake of media anymore.

That's...pretty sweet.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

B&N has started puttings ads on its website. This does not make me want to buy books from them.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I...that I mind less than ads in books? In my brain, ads on websites happen.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Insurance ads and "Find Your Classmates" on barnesandnoble.com? That seems weird and low-rent to me. It's fine for blogs, but I don't want that stuff on a company's ordering site.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...oh, okay, that is pretty unclassy. Ick.

(I wonder if Classmates.com is the only thing actually buying up web advertising anymore.)

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

This is what I love about AdBlock. I have completely forgotten that the internet has ads!

[rosefox]

This seems not so much new as a throwback to the days when every mass market paperback had ad pages in the back for the publisher's other books (including an order form), and in the middle or on the inside of the cover for various other products. My favorites were always the marital aids advertised in the middle of trashy adult books.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Well, the newness or not thereof...eh. Everything old is new again. It's the price-drop incentive that interests me so much.

[rosefox]

It's like free and paid reading accounts! Sort of.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 'zactly. :)

[rosefox]

I wonder how the market will deal with this. Right now, books without ads are "normal" and books with them are "cheap", but you know Amazon would love for books with ads to be "normal" so books without them can be "premium" and sold at ridiculously jacked-up prices.

It is, meanwhile, only a matter of time until someone figures out how to make AdBlock for the Kindle.

[ckd]

Wasn't there a soup ad or something in the German translation of one of the Discworld books?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

That, I do not know. I am not a great follower of publishing uproars, alas. :/

[ckd]

Found it: "Heyne Verlag GmbH published most of Terry Pratchett’s early Discworld titles in Germany, but following an unauthorised advertisement for Maggi soup in the middle of the text of Pyramids, he moved to Goldmann Verlag, part of Bertlesmann Group, now renamed Randomhouse Verlagsgruppe."

[themachinestops.livejournal.com]

I don't see a problem with this, as long as it doesn't affect the payout to the author and publisher. If it gets more people to buy the book (or e-book), author gets more money, author can quit lousy dayjob, author can write more books. (P.S. "Author" in that last sentence refers to ME.) After all, it's not like we all haven't learned to ignore ads anyway. The only quibble is if they make the ads harder to ignore, by putting them in the sidebars or making them a big watermark over the whole page. Six months after their introduction someone's going to figure out how to delete them anyway, at least from e-books.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, advertising is now the price you pay for walking around.

I saw the new Shea Stadium (I will NEVER call it Citi Field) a couple of weeks ago for the first time since its completion. Where I used to have a view of the back of Shea, with a few small signs and a giant opening through which one could see the stands, now there is a WALL of mile-high billboards, stacked one over the other, giant tesserae of sales pitches mosaiced like bad art glaring over the Whitestone expressway.

If I were a billionaire, I would pay the Mets to take that shit down.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Since there used to be ads in print books and that was eventually phased out by the early 1980s or so, I suppose this means that we're regressing.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Personally I continue to be weirded out by the things that have a chance of being patented.

What do they say about not assuming.

[(Anonymous)]

Hey cousin, in my humble opnion, a book with advertising is less expensive than a non-ad book only due to the fact that the major corporation has paid for a spot in said book which offsets the price of the book. It has nothing to do with blackmail. The money paid to the book distributor/publisher is the same or more. What is sad, is that less people are buying books and the publisher has "sold out" it's readers by getting in bed with the advertisers. Just my two cents. BTW, the reason I am invading your private space is that I have an idea for a sci-fi novella and would love to pitch it to someone who can really write. Let me know where to send a confidential email. Brooke

Re: What do they say about not assuming.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hey!

I'm heading out for a conference this weekend, so I won't be near e-mail from tomorrow morning to about Sunday night, but drop me a line at leah (AT) leahbobet (DOT) com.