"Consumers Don't Mind...Ads." Really?

[stonetools]

Amazon is offering the 3G KSO. Wanta bet that it will supercharge K 3G sales? Yep, folks just HATE those ad supported models.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

My argument is that it's technologically impossible to insert *useful* ads into either of the two dominant ebook forms at the moment, .mobi and .epub, and that ads in other formats (PDF) will cut down on purchases because the restrictions necessary for the ads will interfere with usage preferences.

It isn't impossible. ADE and Kindle supports some scripting, and ebooks tend to have lots of metadata. Have some simple scripts to insert an ad between chapters. Basically have it so you have a preselected ad, and for devices capable have the script overlay more up to date ads using the metadata as a basis for selecting ads.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

It isn't impossible. ADE and Kindle supports some scripting, and ebooks tend to have lots of metadata. Have some simple scripts to insert an ad between chapters. Basically have it so you have a preselected ad, and for devices capable have the script overlay more up to date ads using the metadata as a basis for selecting ads.

Insert ads: Do-able; bit of a hassle. Non-wireless books could have ads inserted at time of purchase; more cloud-based readers could have ads inserted at time of download, or feed new ads in at time of reading.

Insert *useful* ads: only possible if the ebook supplier controls hardware and software.

An ad that is useful for reading between chapters on a blackberry isn't useful on an iPad, and both of those might be counting on color that won't be transferable to an e-ink screen. If it uses pictures, the screen size is drastically important; if not, well, mobi doesn't support special fonts nor much formatting inside the document.

It'd be easy to insert ads similar to Google's sidebar text ads... and they'd be worthless. Nobody would pay enough to have them inserted, to offset a notable amount of the book price. They'd expect customers to glance at them, maybe recognize the company name, and move on; they're not going to pay $1 per viewer for that.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Insert ads: Do-able; bit of a hassle. Non-wireless books could have ads inserted at time of purchase; more cloud-based readers could have ads inserted at time of download, or feed new ads in at time of reading.

Most books have ads in them. All newspapers and magazines have ads in them. Why not ebooks. This doesn't mean with like them.

My advice, turn the page and keep reading.

BOb

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Most books have ads in them. All newspapers and magazines have ads in them. Why not ebooks. This doesn't mean with like them.

My advice, turn the page and keep reading.

BOb

I haven't seen an ad in a book for over six years now, so I'm not sure where this "most books have ads" comes from.

Unless you mean the single page "other books by this author" list at the beginning of the book between the copyright and the TOC.

Anyway, Elfwreck's point was not that ebooks won't have ads because people don't like ads, but rather that ebooks won't have ads because the market isn't viable enough to make the price worthwhile (no advertiser will pay $1 to reach a maximum of 1 customer) and because the technology for ebooks is in such a state of flux at the moment that it's not currently viable.

[stonetools]

nsert ads: Do-able; bit of a hassle. Non-wireless books could have ads inserted at time of purchase; more cloud-based readers could have ads inserted at time of download, or feed new ads in at time of reading.

Insert *useful* ads: only possible if the ebook supplier controls hardware and software.

So we have gone from its IMPOSSIBLE to insert ads into ebooks to its impossible to insert USEFUL ads into ebooks.( Useful defined according to your criteria). I saw those goalposts moving .
You've argued that those who want to put ads in ebooks must institute the perfect solution: universal , working across all platforms and every circumstance. If not, its a failure. We call that the perfect solution fallacy where I come from .
I'm not convinced by your marketing analysis, either. Can't see the vast difference you seem to think there is between ads in magazines and ads in books.
What I'm seeing is a kind of NIMBY attitude. Its OK for ad-supported models in virtually every other type of media, but it can't be in OUR preferred medium. OUR medium , and by extension, WE are special and shouldn't be sullied by these grubby ads.
Let's review the history of novels. Back in the 19th Century, novels were often sold as serials in magazines- magazines that included ads. That continued right into the 1960s . The Foundation novels by Asimov were originally serialized in magazines-magazines that yes, Virginia, had ads in them. There is nothing in the novel form that says that ads are verboten.
Elfwreck seems to focus on why big publishers might not want to do ads in books. That's as maybe, but the freemium model really isn't for the big guys. In the gaming and software industry, where the freemium model is prevalent, its the independent, small developers who primarily use this model. Its a way of offering their products free or at a discount, while enabling them to get a stream of income from the ads.
With the Ios games I am familiar with, the games are limited only to the Ios platform-hence, NOT universal-and cannot be shared, so its a sale to one customer. They are free with ads and $2.99-4.99 to upgrade to premium. Apparently, they make money for their guys despite being limited to one platform and one customer.
It seems to me this can work for independent writers too. People here are always telling aspiring writers here that they need to give away their work and praise writers for it. Well, all that praise and goodwill doesn't pay bills. People here seem to want their writers starving and working "only for their art".
Ad supported freemium would allow these writers to make some money AND offer the books to consumers for cheap or free. Elfwreck and other folk seem to be just freaking out over the possibility of ADS in their precious books, without understanding could be a boon for the independent writer.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by stonetools

So we have gone from its IMPOSSIBLE to insert ads into ebooks to its impossible to insert USEFUL ads into ebooks.

No offense, but this sounds very snarky and self-righteous.

The first post Elfwreck made in this thread said:

"Across the bottom" of what? The ePub? (Has someone figured out how to put headers & footers in ePubs--and make them display on Sony ebook readers?) Does this ad take up 25% of the eink screen for the entire length of the book?

Does the ad still show up if the book is run through Calibre? Is the book a locked PDF, to try to prevent removal of the ad--making it unreadable on small screens?

People are very likely willing to accept non-invasive ads in ebooks. The problem lies in figuring out how to make non-invasive ads work in several ebook formats. The easiest is "splash page at beginning & end," and some publishers do this with their freebies--ads for upcoming releases or tie-in products; readers are happy with that. An ad at ever chapter break is also possible; more intrusive than that, and the ad-supported books will be ignored or stripped before they're read.

Even at chapter breaks, though, the question is, "why is it worth the advertiser's money to pay for part of the ebook?" If the ads lower the cost of the book by $1, are the advertisers going to get $1 of business for every ebook that sells?

It's very clear from the parts I highlighted that Elfwreck did NOT start from a position of "its impossible to insert ads". Zie clearly says that some e-books ALREADY HAVE ads.

It's very tricky to have a meaningful conversation when one side is all snark. Just throwing that out there as my two cents.

EDIT: And if you're talking about someone OTHER than Elfwreck saying it's impossible to insert ads, then you shouldn't quote Elfwreck's most recent post as some kind of "goal posts have been moved" gotcha. It's equally hard to have a meaningful conversation with someone who assumes everyone on the other side of the debate holds equally identical beliefs.

[stonetools]

OK. Stand corrected. I did overstate Elfwreck's position-although she did talk about the impossibility of tailoring ads to different platforms .
Since you didn't comment on the rest of my post, I assume you are in agreement

[shibamistress]

At first I thought about getting the KSO because for me, that $25 difference in price makes a lot of difference. I could use that difference in getting a cover for my Kindle, or some books.

But then the more I started thinking about it, the more I liked the offers that were associated with the KSO....they seem to be things I would use, and since I don't have a lot of disposable income, any way I can save makes a difference to me. So I'm with Tubemonkey and others here...now I prefer to get the KSO to take advantage of those discounts.

One of the things that has me scratching my head about a lot of this conversation has been that people seem really surprised by the differences of opinion. Some people won't mind the ads. Some people will welcome them. some will hate them. It's the generalizations that are the fallacy.

[Giggleton]

Why would you buy the KSO if you minded the ads anyway? lol, what a bunch of nuts.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by shibamistress

At first I thought about getting the KSO because for me, that $25 difference in price makes a lot of difference. I could use that difference in getting a cover for my Kindle, or some books.

The current offer is the $60 Lighted Leather Cover for 50% off. Couple that with a KSO and your final price is $114 + $30 = $144. That's just $5 more than a K3 without ads. Not bad. I ordered my cover today and I'll have it on Friday.

Better hurry though, because you have to claim the offer before midnight on 28 May. Amazon generally gives you four days to claim these offers. The procedure for claiming is to open the offer on your KSO, then click "Email Me This Offer" at the bottom. An email will be sent to you with the promo code. You then have until the offer's deadline to redeem it. In this case, it's 28 Aug.

Even though the offer expires 28 Aug, you must purchase the KSO and have the email sent to you before midnight 28 May or you will lose out.

To date, my KSO has saved me $175; enough to pay for it with $61 left over.

[carpetmojo]

Don't care if they paid me (which they are with price, I suppose ) I wouldn't accept the inane junk of advertising ruining the enjoyable act of reading without distraction.

Once again, a perfectly simple, beneficial experience hijacked in an attempt to get us to accept what "they" think we will accept, for "their" profit.

I despair sometimes..............

That's this month's rant over ........................

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Don't care if they paid me (which they are with price, I suppose ) I wouldn't accept the inane junk of advertising ruining the enjoyable act of reading without distraction.

Once again, a perfectly simple, beneficial experience hijacked in an attempt to get us to accept what "they" think we will accept, for "their" profit.

I despair sometimes..............

That's this month's rant over ........................

But the ads aren't visible when reading. I rarely visit the home page and when I do, the small ad banner at the bottom is all but invisible to me. As to the screensavers, they're not visible to me.

So, I only see ads when I chose to.

[stonetools]

HMMMMMMMMMM
I kind of see a way forward here, based on the KSO model
( looks into Crystal ball)
In the future you will have two options for ebooks at Amazon:
The Kindle Edition and the Kindle Edition Special Offers (KESO)
Choose the KE and you get the same , private , ad-free experience you always have gotten, in return for paying full price.
Choose the KESO and you get access to Special Offers. Maybe you get three pages of Special Offers at the start of the book, with a link to the Special Offers home page. Maybe when you open your KESO, you get a prompt asking whether you want to be taken to the Special Offers home page, or continue reading.
The KESO will be offered at a discount. Its hard to figure out what the discount would be for the KESO, but based on the runaway success of the KSO, it's got to be worth more than the $1 Elfwreck is talking about. Let's say $5. For some KESOs, you would get the ebook free. Even if you pay a price, the value of the Special Offers is such that the ebook pays for itself over time or even makes you a profit.
Writers can opt whether they want to offer a KESO or not along side the KE. If they choose to offer a KESO of their work, they get a cut from the advertisers. I expect that independent writers will swarm over this opportunity, with bestselling authors joining later. Later on there are Nook Book Special Offers and Kobobooks Special Offers as the model spreads.
How's that for a vision of the future?

[DiapDealer]

How's that for a vision of the future?

Bleak.