Rapper Jay-Z has a memoir coming out next month from Random House. The list price is $35. Ouch. You’ll be able to pick it up for cheaper at your local retailer. But still, $35? The Big Six just keep pricing themselves out of the marketplace.
I bring your attention to this manuscript because of a development I knew would eventually hit mainstream publishing: ads in books. Microsoft is buying ad space inside the book to promote their new search engine, Bing.
It seems like a natural progression. Magazines have ads — in fact, many periodicals are merely booklets of ads, with articles thrown in as filler. Why not books? My beef isn’t with the ads themselves. I’ll do what I always do when presented with a page of advertisement in a magazine . . . ignore it and turn the page. I’m more concerned with who benefits from this additional revenue stream.
If Microsoft paid ten thousand dollars for the sponsorship (a figure I choose only because it’s round; they probably paid significantly more), does the full ten grand go to Random House? Or does the author also get a cut? A 50/50 split between publisher and writer wouldn’t be bad, but I’d never accuse the Big Six of being so generous.
This will become much more prevalent in non-fiction than fiction. Non-fiction has more opportunities for direct involvement with advertisers. Not to mention cross-promotion. Imagine ads for Fox News inside Sarah Palin’s new book, which is published by HarperCollins, of course (all owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp). A level of commercial incest so unnatural, it rips a hole in the universe itself. Or CBS Records advertising the music CD of their latest recording artist inside another rapper’s memoir published by Simon & Schuster (which is owned by Columbia Broadcasting).
You’ll see this encroach on some fiction titles too, mostly from authors who are more interested in making money than telling stories. James Patterson’s books are perfect for advertisements. His novels are filled with so many chapters of such short length, half the book becomes white space. Just add a tag at the end of each chapter: YOUR AD HERE.
I would never sink to such indignity.
-j.s.
This post brought to you by Skittles: TASTE THE RAINBOW.
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