Will Amazon Put Advertisements In eBooks? 226
destinyland writes "A book editor at Houghton Mifflin argues ebook advertising is 'coming soon to a book near you.' (Paywalled unless you go through Google.) Amazon has filed a patent for advertisements on the Kindle, and the book editor joins with a business professor in the Wall Street Journal to make the case for advertisements in ebooks. Book sales haven't increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks. According to another industry analyst, Amazon is being pressured to make ebook sales more profitable for publishers, partly because Apple offers them more lucrative terms in Apple's iBookstore. One technology blog notes that Amazon's preference seems to be keeping book prices low, and wonders whether consumers would accept advertising if it meant that new ebooks were then free. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has confused the issue even more by publishing a 'shoppable' children's storybook online, prompting a fierce reaction from one blog: 'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'"
Let the Reader/Consumer Decide If It Works (Score:5, Insightful)
(Paywalled unless you go through Google.)
I apologize for not RTFA but I was brought to the same paywall whether I went through Google or not. Is it some sort of lottery?
'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'
I would just like to say that I welcome both options. Reader A can pay a high premium and enjoy the original novel as the author intended it to be enjoyed and Reader B can pay little or nothing and try to read Fahrenheit 451 with moving advertisements marketing gallons of premium kerosene at wholesale prices (BUY BUY BUY!). And you know what? I'm really not opposed to this. Maybe the authors are and maybe it offends the your *ism but as long as they keep the old model as an option who cares? I haven't noticed a decline in my ability to purchase paperbacks and hardcovers following the advent of e-readers so why should I fear e-readers installing advertisements into books?
Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has confused the issue even more by publishing a 'shoppable' children's storybook online ...
It's a 'storybook' except that the children are real children acting in front of a green screen that has superimposed images of chidren's-bookish scenes done up in a flash video. Congratulations, the "fierce" blog has done little more than positively re-enforce this marketing maneuver because I just watched an advertisement for children's clothes!
...
I also am a little bit annoyed that we complain about the RIAA and MPAA as clinging to an old business model and then as book publishers and retailers try something new (or are even rumored to try something new) we hop all over it and denounce it as a crime against humanity. And yet daily I read news sites laden with advertisements. The very site I write this comment on transfers my comments to you, the reader, alongside political advertisements trying to raise your ire about "ObamaCare" or "Barack the Magic Negro [photobucket.com]." Yes, yes, there are tools like AdBlock, NoScript and Flash blockers specifically designed to circumvent this but to the average reader of Slashdot, this is reality.
And despite the horror of advertising, here we are
Get the fuck outta here. (Score:5, Insightful)
$9.99 is already WAY too much for an eBook. Why the need for advertising? ::sigh:: I guess it's a good thing that the only ebooks I put on my nook are either released for free through creative commons, or are now considered public works (or borrowed from our local library). I absolutely love my nook, but no freakin' way am I paying $9.99 for an eBook when I can pay $4.99-$6.99 for a paperback.
"options" (Score:5, Insightful)
aye, there's the rub... will we have options?
Do we have the option to get our cable TV without comercials? there are a few pay on-demand channels, but as a general rule, no.
Broadcast radio? no
Magizines? no
Think like a distributer... why charge less for the version with ads in them when you can charge full price AND get the advertising money and make it the only version offered. If I were a heartless corp, I would offer the two versions, then when the next big hit comes out only offer it with ads at full price, then slowly increase the number of ad-only books till that was all I offered in about 5 years or so.
Re:Let the Reader/Consumer Decide If It Works (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get the fuck outta here. (Score:1, Insightful)
I like the lie about profits being sqeezed by ebook. $10 for a 100k text file with a little embedded market, compared to chopping down trees, making pulp, storing it, shipping it, converting to press supplies, printing, binding, warehousing, shipping, retail storage and shelf rental, checkout etc. Even if these are very efficient, there's no way an ebook should be more than a few cents *after* the initial release and massive hardback profiteering has been done. By the time paperback editions are kicking about in the street and being left on public transport, ebooks should be a buck a piece, especially as you can't give them away, sell them, and can only "lend" then in proprietary land.
Dreams (Score:4, Insightful)
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Re:Old ads. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How will this be used? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're doing it with the free books that they're truly giving away, then sure. If they're inserting ads into the freely available public domain books? No thanks, I'll keep looking for a service that doesn't want to bombard me with ads.
There've been ads in real books, like, forever (Score:1, Insightful)
Many real books have a tear-out order form for other books bound right in. What about the subscription cards bound into magazines? Nothing new here.
I am opposed to it (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the tracking, well, what if you want to read a book about explosives? What if that tips off the FBI, and they come to your house demanding to know why you are reading about bombs? Do you really think that the marketing firms are going to keep their databases secret from the government? Do you remember when the PATRIOT act was passed, and librarians publicly denounced the clause about handing library records over to the government, for the exact same reasons?
Technology is supposed to be improving our lives. Why, then, are we accepting uses of it that do not improve our lives and only serve the interests of publishing and marketing companies?
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Book sales haven't increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks
That makes no sense at all. Ebooks cost the same as paper books, yet there's no transportation, storage, inventory, or other costs associated with publishing them. How could ebooks be bringing profits down?
How stupid do these people think we are, anyway?
Re:Old ads. (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't look too hard, but I didn't see details on how the ads would be placed. I doubt we'll be looking at, "Her heart was pounding as she unlatched the door and BUY VIAGRA!"
Re:Let the Reader/Consumer Decide If It Works (Score:4, Insightful)
Advertising of yesteryear (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody needs a patent to put old-style advertisements in eBooks. You do not need proprietary software to do it. These ads will not be the same as the ads you are used to seeing in books.
Depends on how it's done (Score:5, Insightful)
It all depends on how it's done. Advertising in books is not a new thing; many paperbacks have a few pages at the back devoted to ads for other books by the publisher, or sometimes for things like book clubs. And though I haven't seen one in a while, I remember some paperbacks having a bound-in cardstock insert. If ads are limited to this sort of thing, they probably won't be a problem. They're usually relevant to the reader's interest and they're easily skippable. Where I do see a problem is if ads are done like the promos on a DVD -- Pop in the book, and have to sit through three minutes of advertising before you get to read it.
Still, the only reason why this would work is because of proprietary formats. If ebooks were published using open standards (yay, epub!) someone would just publish a reader which skips the advertisements -- just like you can get DVD players which skip straight over the "mandatory" front-matter on a DVD.
I'll just keep supporting Baen. Their whole catalog, available in open, non-DRM formats, for paperback prices. Even if they were to start including ads, they'd be easy to rip out of the HTML if they got to be obnoxious.
Re:"options" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get the fuck outta here. (Score:1, Insightful)
I usually donate anywhere from $10-$20 per paycheck to them, depending on how much I've downloaded and read in the past couple of weeks.
Mod +1, Hero.
You, sir, are a shining example of the right way to support projects such as these. It's a shame there aren't more like you (I count myself amongst the freeloaders, shamefully).
Re:"options" (Score:1, Insightful)
DVDs? Ha! How many ads do you have to fast forward through to get to what you actually paid for?
Re:I've seen lots of adverts for similar books in (Score:3, Insightful)
Can I get a pop-up blocker for my Nook?
That's the kind of advertising I think most of us fear. The "Hey you might also like these books" ads currently found in the back of many old and new books are fine. But can the advertisers, publishers and sellers fight the temptation to fully leverage the advertising potential of these modern multi-media capable readers?
Re:Let the Reader/Consumer Decide If It Works (Score:4, Insightful)
The publishers are interested in making big piles of money
exactly... now, what gives you more money:
option a:
Sell book X with adds for $1, and without for $10. Ad mone makes $9 per book, average net for each book sold: $10
option b:
only sell book X with adds for $10 because the only three other e-book retailers are doing the same. Ad money still makes $9 per book, average net is $19.
Why cut your net in nearly half? It is the same reason why your cellphone company can get away with charging 25c a text, because every other cellphone company is charging 25c a text, not because it actually costs that much to do.
It will start with the next huge blockbuster book, think the next harry potter or twilight... it will ONLY come in full price, ad-saturated books, and because everyone wants one, they will pay it. Next big book, maybe not as popular, same thing, then another, and another... within a few years, every book will be full price + ads.
To answer the question.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Will the ads be unskippable?
Also, yes.
Will it annoy some people? Yes.
Will enough consumers keep buying them that the people who try boycotting won't influence them one jot? Yes.
Re:Let the Reader/Consumer Decide If It Works (Score:3, Insightful)
You've made two unspoken assumptions in coming up with your examples.
One is that Option A and Option B will both sell X number of ebooks. There is no guarantee that both options will sell the same number of ebooks. IMO Option B will lead to more sales of ad-free paper books.
Your other assumption is that the market is full of mindless consumers with no sense of the real value of the product beyond their desire for it. If the inconvenience of the advertisements outweighs the value the consumer draws out of the book then they will not buy it.
Cell phone companies have gotten away with charging ridiculous rates for text messages because they've been able to convince people that texts are fundamentally different from other data. Average Joe consumer is willing to pay an exorbitant rate because he believes the telcos when they say that texts are unique and expensive. Book readers will not be so gullible. Mainly because they already have a sense that a new hardcover is worth about $25USD and has been for some time.
Re:Confusing and Fallacious Comparisons (Score:3, Insightful)
let me tell you a story... a story of a little text message. This little message, let's call him Bill, Bill was a happy little string of 1's and 0's. Back a few years ago, Bill could get anywhere he wanted for just 10 cents! it was a wonderful time, all three of the cellphone carriers had the same fees so Bill didn't care where he was going for his time.
But, one day carrier A decided that Bill was getting too much of a free ride and ramped up the price to 15 cents. Now Bill was sad, he didn't think he was that fat, so for a while he hung out with the other two carriers, but soon they saw just how much more money carrier A was making those times that Bill had to use them and rose their prices to 15 cents too... now it didn't matter where Bill went, he had to pay the higher fee.
Well, a couple years later, the carriers once again raised their prices to 20 cents, then 25 cents, first one would raise their prices and for a while Bill could avoid the increased fees by going to the other carriers but soon they too would match the highest cost carrier.
Now, Bill has to pay 25c to go anywhere, and another 10c once he gets there. The cost it takes to go places hasn't changed, but because one carrier could get that ammount out of Bill, they all raised their prices to match.
The moral of the story is: free market only works when the sellers give the customers the choice to drive the market. If there is no choice, or all choices are rendered equally bad, free market falls flat on it's ass.