Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
For a hundred years, publishers & authors have been trying to figure out how to subsidize novels with ads--unsuccessfully. Readers will tolerate promotions of related materials, but not the kind of advertising that brings in outside dollars.
The ad-supported other media are flailing in the wake of free content available on the internet. *Nothing* indicates that ads will be more successful in books then they've been at the tops of webpages... where it takes thousands of viewers to be worth a few dollars. An ebook isn't read by thousands of viewers; it's usually read by one. Who won't be flipping back to the start to see the ad every time she opens the book. (Ad could appear before each opening? --sure, if you rewrote the firmware for every ereader the book's available for.)
Nobody's offered a list of advertisers lining up to pay $1-3 of the end price of a book for the right to place their ads inside, much less advertisers willing to pay the *entire* list price of an ebook for the ability to inflict ads on the readers.
Until the project has the support of the people with the money, it's a useless plan. Yes, there are readers who will tolerate ads. Quite a lot of them. But that's not the same as "readers who will buy the products advertised"--and advertisers know that. They count on widespread access at low costs-per-ad, which doesn't happen with novels.
DRM'd ebooks are sold on a one purchase=1-6 readers plan... and all of those readers share an account. Advertisers won't pay $1-6 to reach "up to six people."
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Actually, they haven't been unsucccessful at all. Prior to 1950, most genre novels were serialized in ad-supported magazines. You sort of brush that aside, but its important to realize that the situation 1950 to the present date isn't the one true model for the distribution of novels, ordained from on high by the book gods.
FWIW, I think a lot of people with money are looking for ways to have ad-supported model for ebooks. After all,on MR, people bellyache day and night about the "unconscionably high price" of ebooks. Well, one way to offer a lower price is to have an ad-supported model. It's entirely possiblethat one of those people will succeed. "Impossible" just means "impossible till now".
Your points are well-taken. What you should realize is that if the other media don't solve the problem, they will go out of business, with nothing to replace them. I'm not sure that's something to look forward to.