Marketers are exploring a variety of formats, including sponsorships that give readers free books. Videos, graphics or text with an advertiser's message that appear when a person first starts a book or along the border of the digital pages are also in the works. Ads can be targeted based on the book's content and the demographic and profile information of the reader.Wowio Inc., a digital-book store, is already doing it. They’re selling ads in e-books downloaded from sites for reading on laptops or Apple’s iPad or Amazon’s Kindle. The ads you might see could be two or three pages of advertisement or some kind of freebie.
The movie site Fandango is … giving Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," with three pages of Fandango promotions, to people who buy tickets on the site to the Jack Black movie "Gulliver's Travels," which opens on Christmas.Advertisers believe that consumers will accept the ads if it means they get the book for free. Wowio charges advertisers between $1 to $3 for each book downloaded. Does any of this money trickle down to the writer? That’s up to the publisher.
Will you, the author, have a say-so over whether and what kinds of ads go in your book? Probably not, but Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, said:
"It's a nonstarter here without their assent, regardless of format," he says. "However, if our authors were ever to be agreeable to it, it might have some traction."This definitely affects authors. So right now, at the beginning of this idea/trend, what do you think about it?
People said digital books wouldn't work, but look how far they have come. The world of publishing and marketing is changing. If it helps promote the author, so be it. However, if they have no say in the matter, I do not think it is such a great idea.
ReplyDeleteIt will happen though, regardless.
I'm not crazy about it, but it was bound to happen. Look at how many ads we have to sit through at the movies now. When I saw Dawn Treader, counting movie previews, the ads were almost twelve minutes long.
ReplyDeleteI'm personally against ads in books even if the books are free.
ReplyDeleteProbably I wouldn't care. We're bombarded with ads everywhere. I have developed a mental anti-ad filter, so probably I wouldn't see it >:)
ReplyDeleteCold As Heaven
I think I would find it irritating. I'd prefer to just have my book.
ReplyDeleteI don't like ads. But they are a necessary evil. None of our favorite TV shows would exist if not for commercials. If it helps to keep some of the cost of making books/ebooks down instead of passing along the cost to consumers I can wade through a few ads and still be happy.
ReplyDeleteIf we lose the battle and it becomes a must then the author should have a say in the kind of ads. Ads don't do much for magazines.
ReplyDeleteI'm a crab and would note the ads and not buy the items.
Ads are the price we pay for content. I have any number of paperbacks going back to the sixties that have front material listing the authors previous works and/or blurbs for earlier works. Then in the back are several pages advertising other books by the same publisher.
ReplyDeleteI read the New York Times and Washington Post on my iPad and every few pages an ad will appear. You just swipe over it. There aren't nearly as many ads as in the print editions. I actually like the ads in the NYT magazine and would accept more in the iPad version. Why not novels?
Kinda sucks in a way. Here's this book you've poured your heart and soul into, and someone smears adds all over it. And, yes, if it has to be done, the author should, not only have a say so, but be paid. I'm tired of every inch of our lives being commercialized.
ReplyDeleteI hate this idea so much and I know it will come to fruition. Just as we can't watch the TV without a graphic on the bottom now, and can't read online papers without the ads, books will go there too. Humanity is going to lose all focus soon, I'm pretty sure.
ReplyDeleteI agree Alex. You get to the theater early so you can get a good seat, then you sit through sooo many commercials.
ReplyDeleteRemember the period we went through where authors wrote certain brands in their books and were supported by those brands?
That's the thing...we're so used to commercials everywhere, we may learn to ignore them in books.
Chris, I don't know if it will lower the cost to consumer or writer or if it will just make money for the publisher (unless the author is the publisher).
We're certainly moving toward that, Mark.
Liza, perhaps we're moving toward ads being sent into our heads without us realizing it's happening. Wasn't there something like that years ago, where a brand name would flash on the screen so quickly that you weren't aware of it, but your mind was?
I don't like ads anywhere, anytime, but I guess it's kind of inevitable.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me ideally the book would be available with or without (costing more without) and as a READER I think that's fair--I don't mind the idea--I tune out pretty well. As a WRITER, the author BETTER get some portion of that ad revenue! I would say the writer should end up with MORE in the ad version because their story is having to share space with something obnoxious.
ReplyDeleteCommercials are everywhere I guess.
ReplyDeleteHi Helen. I'm a new reader to your blog. Nice to meet you. I enjoyed this post.
ReplyDeleteI think I counted 16 minutes for ads, during our last visit to the movies.
If I were to have ads in any of my e-books, I'd like the courtesy of being able to decide which ones. I think ads would be acceptable on those grounds, and a limit on where they appear in the book - preferably at the end, where they'd be the least disruptive to the experience. I'm guessing they'll be out of our control, though, and the product placement will be like when you visit a website: usually pretty annoying.
ReplyDeleteJust because books have gone digital doesn't mean they should be bastardised like music and television has become. My worry is that the adverts on these would become more and more irrelevant as time goes on. I'd likely be fine if a book had ads that supported that particular genre or publisher, but I'd be afraid to open up my eCopy of, say, The Hobbit, and be faced with ads asking me to consolidate my debts or some rubbish.
ReplyDeleteIf it's going to be done (and it's pretty much inevitable) I hope against hope that they think it through first and make it relevant to the consumer.
Welcome Happy Whisk. One of the many things that bug me about movie ads is that a lot of them are for TV shows!
ReplyDeleteTrue, Christina. And if they're at the end of the book, chances are people wouldn't see them. The advertisers are going to want them where you can't miss them, say, in the middle of the book.
It reminds me of newspapers who are losing readers so they're going online. They'll still have ads online, but probably more of them than they did in print.
I prefer to pay for my book. It is inevitable I suppose but I fear they will also add it to books we pay for and then it will show every time we open our book (not just the first time) and then between chapters, and so on.
ReplyDeleteYou could be right, Holly.
ReplyDeleteI’m totally against it. We are bombarded by ads everywhere. I want to escape into a book not be assaulted by hype to buy, buy, buy.
ReplyDeleteIf ads do start appearing in books, I hope it is not the type mentioned that would scroll down the side of the text. How annoying would that be? And I do hope the author is not forgotten in this new marketing approach.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this information, Helen. Just another example of how ebooks are changing how we communicate and read.
ReplyDeleteAdvertising is everywhere. There are constantly attempts to sell me on something. Well, I think literature is the one thing that shouldn't touch! Besides, ebooks can't be that expensive anyway. Not like buying a hardcover, as delightful as it is to read a hardcover...
I second Jane's sentiment about being bombarded by ads. When I click on a video online, I hate waiting the first minute through an ad I cannot click out of. I think that's the ONLY way I'd support this ... First if there's a $$ benefit to the author, and second, the reader has to have a way to bypass the ad if they want to.
ReplyDeleteMe, too, Jane. An ad would totally pull me out of the story world.
ReplyDeleteJoanne, I like both of your terms.
"Videos, graphics or text with an advertiser's message that appear when a person first starts a book or along the border of the digital pages are also in the works."
ReplyDeleteI could care less if there are a few pages of static ads at the beginning or end of books (e or otherwise). But the first one I run into with ads in the borders will be the last book I buy from that publisher. I don't want anything pulling me out of the story.
~jon
Whatever brings in new readers is fine with me, but the author should have input.
ReplyDeleteIn an ideal world, the author would have input. Maybe they will in the real world, but I'm not holding my breath. Ebooks lend themselves so easily to the insertion of ads that it seem almost inevitable.
ReplyDeleteI guess it was inevitable. Seems like ads are in everything else these days. You have to admit the eBook format is a perfect format for it.
ReplyDeleteAs for me? I'd have to think about that.
I suppose we'd get used to it, but it would be unfortunate to have ads in my book if the product was something I didn't use or didn't like.
ReplyDeleteThey can't target the ads to everyone, but I imagine they'll do studies and target it to the age, sex, purchases, etc. of the most likely reader.
ReplyDeleteI am appalled but unsurprised. Wonder if someone can invent Tivo for e-books.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea, Kathy. Some app on your eReader that would automatically cull out the ads.
ReplyDeleteIt is inevitable I think Helen. These days where there's marketing there's ads.
ReplyDeleteWe're bombarded by too many ads already. Luckily I've control of my own books.
ReplyDeleteFire and Cross