Advertisements in Ebooks-Good Idea?

[Serpentine]

I haven't read up in this thread, however if I recall correctly, there's a patent on in-ebook-ads. I also remember an outcry about it being issued a few years ago.

I'd check up on that before you have some people knocking on your door.

Also, it'll just mean that your book is ripped and re-released asap

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Well, the advertisers don't have to appeal to everyone-just to the vast majority. My guess is that most people who read ebooks remain connected by default-especially when you include all those who read ebooks on their smartphones. Five years from now most people will read on devices that will be connected all or most of the time.

Really? I don't remain connected. It drains the battery. The only time I connect is to download. I then turn off wifi (unless I forget.) It's probably different for smartphone or multi-use devices.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I actually believe that indie authors will be the first to pioneer the use of ads in books. Let's face it, Stephen King and James Patterson have made their big money. They don't have to bother with ads in their books or discount their prices.
Indie writers are different. Many of them are looking for income any way they can. I can see indie writers offering two versions of their books - an ad-free 2.99 version for those who hate ads and an ad-supported version for 0.99 or free. There may be even a fremium model where you get the ad-supported model for free with an option to "upgrade" to the ad-free version if you like the book. It works for games and apps, why not books?
The beauty of the "links" approach is that the issue of "intrusiveness" largely disappears, so long as the authors and publishers are sensible about it. Since authors would have ultimate control, it would be win-win for authors, IMO.

King and Patterson don't have to bother with ads--but guess who the advertisers are going to want?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

amen. the most i've seen is "he went to the fridge and grabbed a Coke". yes its a brand name but i could also just see it as a generic term for soda.

no way in hell would i pay for a product catalog like that.

The difference would be if that "Coke" were suddenly a link to a coupon to buy a case of it. It's not obvious it's product placement so it can fit the story. But if I have a Lexus in my story and it's a link to a dealer (or advertisement) well, that's going to be a different bag of beans. For a small time author, would the advertiser demand that I make it a link? Would I only get paid (as google works today) if people click through? Or am I able to show my sales numbers to an advertiser and say, "hey, it's worth you paying me 200 dollars a month just to be mentioned!" And...what if a better offer comes along 3 months later? "Sorry, your Lexus got beat by Ford. Hard to believe, but I'm taking you out."

So then, as an author, (or publisher) I'm making changes to the ebook to accommodate the ad people. I mean, let's face it. The way a lot of ebooks are priced (under 5 dollars) it would be pretty tempting to change the car/coke/mabeline reference for more money. Maybe Nike accidentally ordered too many pink shorts that didn't sell. Well, guess Sedona will just have to start wearing a cute Nike pink short set that gets mentioned 5 times...

I hate the idea. Even as I write now, I generally choose brands to fit the character because the kind of car a person drives can actually convey a lot of information about a character in one or two words: "Brand new Lexus" is not the same as "beat-up old Chevy with one door that didn't match the others." They call to mind different characters. So does "Hot pink shorts" versus, "Cut-off jeans."

I'd love to say it wouldn't matter, but I think it would.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

And the fact that Glocks don't jam.


Got Glock?

Yep. A couple...

[vxf]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

pirate less? HA!!! i'd trip over myself running to pirate sites to get ad-free versions.

Exactly my thoughts.

[kogi]

I wouldn't even be able to read any ebooks with ads. I speed read and I read blocks of text at a glance. so putting ads on the side of the page would shift me to tears


kogi

[sabredog]

I well remember the full cover cigarette advertising in US imported paperbacks during the 70's. I removed those carefully with a sharp knife.

The day they were banned was a good one.

[Freeshadow]

I hinted this already in the epub3 discussion - that's what we'll get from the ah-so wonderful interactivity extensions: spank-the-monkey banners. *puke*
and NO I don't like the idea.

[LaurelRusswurm]

No. That's one of the reasons why I stopped going to movie theatres.

Any invasion of my reading space or my privacy is far too high a price to pay.

[LaurelRusswurm]

Originally Posted by stonetools

For even more decades novels were serialized in magazines that had ads in them.Most great SF novels published before 1950 were serialized in magazines. Again , people tend to have this rosy-colored view of the past that doesn't stand up to historical analysis.

True. And serializations are a means of promotion: a way of getting new readers to read your books. A time honored marketing tradition, like giving them away free.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Novels aren't the only type of ebook there can be, either. There are also short story or essay collections.

Reading a comic, magazine, even a collection of short stories or essays is a very different experience than reading a novel. The former have hard breaks between elements of content, when one ends and another begins. Advertising there is not as jarring as it would be even with ads between novel chapters.

What it comes down to, though, is the justification. Why?

Going back to the golden age of magazines... what happened to them? I think Asimovs (a johnny-come-lately) and Analog are the only SF survivors. The cost of physically printing these magazines, and shipping &tc was getting too high.

Also, their ads were one way: they put their ads before the reader's eyeballs, not combined with gifting reader privacy to corporate advertisers as has been suggested.

Those ads were an important stream of revenue. One thing that no one screaming about piracy ever mentions is real costs. After you've done ebook setup, making copies costs the publisher about the same as it costs to copy an email. The resulting digital copies cost how much? Almost from the moment that music CDs appeared on the market, the word was out that the real cost was only a few cents each, yet prices were artificially raised to $20 or more.

When the audience believes it is being ripped off, it ceases to owe any loyalty.

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Getting the ads in the first place is going to take a few weeks of networking because I'm no Janet Evanovich. These people aren't going to come to me. I'll have to go looking. That's a few more weeks where instead of working prose, I'm working ads...

Exactly. If I wanted to sell advertising, I wouldn't be writing novels.

I will use name brands where appropriate because humans do. (Verisimilitude.) But I would never want to even consider product placement, because then I would have to serve the needs of the corporation rather than the needs of the story.

Again, far too high a price to pay.

Knocking a couple of bucks off an overpriced ebook does not even approach a justification level for advertising. If both reader and content were free perhaps then. Not before. [And not for me.]

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by LaurelRusswurm

No. That's one of the reasons why I stopped going to movie theatres.

Any invasion of my reading space or my privacy is far too high a price to pay.

Dontcha hate that!

[stonetools]

Reading a comic, magazine, even a collection of short stories or essays is a very different experience than reading a novel. The former have hard breaks between elements of content, when one ends and another begins. Advertising there is not as jarring as it would be even with ads between novel chapters.

What it comes down to, though, is the justification. Why?

Making money for the author?
In the end, the majority of authors agree with Samuel Johnson: " No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money" . Most authors who make a living off writiing want to get paid. There are some around these parts who write for a hobby, and that's great. Go for it. But the writer who feeds himself and his family off his writings is going to look for new sources of revenue, AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

King and Patterson don't have to bother with ads--but guess who the advertisers are going to want?

You go with the authors you have, as a certain Secretary of Defense would have put it.

[stonetools]

It's not surprising that a whole bunch of folks -let's call them the ads-haters- have a posted a lot of "No effing way" comments. When anything new is proposed the naysayers always come out in force to explain why such and such is "impossible." What's interesting is the vehemence with which the ad haters denounce the very possibility of ads in ebooks as not just impossible, or economically infeasible, but as actually immoral.This goes way over the top, IMO. Folks are even saying that no true author will sully their works with ads, and they seem to go so far as to condemn even the possibilityof an ad-supported version, existing alongside a full-price no ads version. TBH, I find such a response absurd. If you can get an ad-free version by paying full price, why should you even be concerned that there is also an ad-supported version?
I think a problem for ad-haters is that they CANNOT concieve that there is a class of persons out there that is ad-tolerant . For the ad hater , to imagine such a thing is like imagining that gravity pushes or that there are square circles. Yet such a class of persons exists. Witness the huge success of the KSO. Witness too, the millions of people who sign up for Groupons or similar promotional vehicles. Such people LOVE getting ads and hearing about bargains. Such people certainly wouldn't be turned off by the appearance of these kinds of deals in the books- quite the contrary. They WANT to get news of such deals.
Now I don't know what the model for ads in ebooks could work. What I doknow is that such a model exists- it just hasn't been found yet. The wise businessman to concieves of such a model -and the wise author who partners with that businessman - will make big money by catering to the ad-tolerant person.