Bill Gates says "Reading is going to go completely online."

[nekokami]

But could software like AdSubtract detect and correct actual changes in content, as orcinus suggested? What a scary thought! As an author, I can just imagine having to include a hash code somewhere in my book, with my digital signature, so readers would be able to check whether the book had been fiddled with.

[orcinus]

Ah! But what if you, as an author, were to get an offer of a percentage from the advertising in your books?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

That could well be an acceptable business arrangement in the future, especially for independent authors. However, none of them are going to accept having their text altered by an advertiser. Rather, they would exercise "product placement," where their main character won't just be drinking vodka, he'll be drinking Smirnoff, then jumping into his Escape Hybrid, stopping to gas up at Shell, and driving on to Disneyland.

Or they'll just let advertisers put their ads at the front or back pages of the book, the way they do with paperbacks now.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Rather, they would exercise "product placement," where their main character won't just be drinking vodka, he'll be drinking Smirnoff, then jumping into his Escape Hybrid, stopping to gas up at Shell, and driving on to Disneyland.

Yep, I see this as inevitable for mass market novels. It's already standard practice and big business for movies. And ad pages included in fixed sections of the book, or even fixed sections of a page seem likely also.

But I think the type of book will have a lot to do with what gets included. A nice fancy coffee table book on nature is probably going to have less ads than the latest murder mystery paperback.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

... he'll be drinking Smirnoff, then jumping into his Escape Hybrid, stopping to gas up at Shell, and driving on to Disneyland.

"You've just published an e-bestseller, what are you going to do now?"

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

A nice fancy coffee table book on nature is probably going to have less ads than the latest murder mystery paperback.

Actually, I was only thinking of the ads for e-books, as in paperbacks. Coffee table books don't have ads now... they have high price tags.

And I was thinking of movies when I wrote this, specifically, James Bond, one of the first movie series to feature numerous product placements. (I laughed so hard during Casino Royale, when Bond in the airport ran past a massive display of Smirnoff Vodka bottles, almost as tall as him! It went by so fast, I'll bet a lot of people didn't even notice it... but for me, they might as well have thrown the bottle through the screen and hit me over the head with it!)

If I was writing a modern story or series, and a company asked me to use their car, beverage, cellphone, etc, in a story, in exchange for compensation for product placement, I would certainly consider it. And if it didn't somehow alter the essentials of the story or characters... why not? Just try to be a bit more subtle about it...

CLUNK

Hey! Who threw that bottle?!?

[yvanleterrible]

That brings us pretty much to an other type of media that could exit when computing power gets to par. We have all seen through the news, an experimental cinema where the spectators go through a digitizing sequence at the entrance. When the movie starts some of the spectators become the (partially) unwilling actors of this feature. The stories and their plot, the scenes and the props, the acting and their renditions have all been planned and been imaged ahead, leaving only the actors' physical appearance and rendering to do.

Okay this was the intro.

It could be possible at some point to have something different based on the previous. Imagine this...

You load up a book, any book. Then as in games today, choose your actors and start. The computer using data from all over the world, from all ages, calculates and draws from the story it reads to you. This will mark a point where computers will interpret what they read and see, making them able to render to image what a story conveys. Blank comprehension spots could be narrated or read by a virtual person to let you comprehend by yourself, until the computer can get the story imaged for you in the real time your brain uses to comprehend. The difference with today's performances will lie in that nothing will be prepared in advance. The computer will make up everything as the story goes.

That is when reading books will die. But creating stories will still exist untill the computer can write masterpieces by itself. Depressingly not far off...

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If I was writing a modern story or series, and a company asked me to use their car, beverage, cellphone, etc, in a story, in exchange for compensation for product placement, I would certainly consider it. And if it didn't somehow alter the essentials of the story or characters... why not? Just try to be a bit more subtle about it...

I'm pretty sure that Baen books had a deal for the more pricy subscriptions where they would promise that the person's name would be used for a character in a future book. I think it was so popular (even with the relatively high prices) that they had to close the offer. I think people would like that. I know I'd love to have a character in a book named after me. People might not want to be the slimy villian, but they love to see their names in print (or e-print)!

[igorsk]

http://www.baensuniverse.com/tucker.html

[NatCh]

Heh, go hang out in John Ringo's space at the Baen Bar if you want to get a character based on you, Bob. He's forever doing such things, it can be a bit distracting, actually. I found while reading Princess of Wands that I spent a fair amount of my attention trying to match his characters up to authors he knew and (very loosely) based the characters on. That's the most blatant example of him doing that I've run across, but the story is such a strong one (which is to say I liked it enough) that it wasn't fatally distracting. If I hadn't realized he was prone to doing such things, I'd probably never have noticed. Well, except for the third party mention of an author named "Robert Nile" who writes an endless series of really long books -- I think I'd've caught that one regardless.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Heh, go hang out in John Ringo's space at the Baen Bar if you want to get a character based on you, Bob. He's forever doing such things, it can be a bit distracting, actually. I found while reading Princess of Wands that I spent a fair amount of my attention trying to match his characters up to authors he knew and (very loosely) based the characters on. That's the most blatant example of him doing that I've run across, but the story is such a strong one (which is to say I liked it enough) that it wasn't fatally distracting. If I hadn't realized he was prone to doing such things, I'd probably never have noticed. Well, except for the third party mention of an author named "Robert Nile" who writes an endless series of really long books -- I think I'd've caught that one regardless.

In Princess of Wands convention story the references are so obvious that you really cannot miss them. The most interesting is of course Mr. Ringo who sets up himself as the most fascinating character as well as murder suspect number one...

If you hang out at Baen's bar you notice a lot of the people there appearing in various Weber/Ringo/Flint (and others less known Baen authors too) quite frequently, including the famous Joe Buckley of the Baen snippets/cd's site who appears in quite a lot of books, though he gets killed rather spectacularly or messily in most...