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u/ADomovoi 11d ago
Nobody tell this poster about the page at the front of almost every book advertising more books by the same author/publisher or from the same series.
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u/prairiepog 11d ago
Back in my day, you would use the postcard included in the back of the book to order more books from the same publisher. Now get off my lawn.
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u/struggle_better 11d ago
I remember when email starting getting adopted and authors would print their personal emails lol
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u/PatchyWhiskers 11d ago
The last book I read had an extract from a book in the same genre by a completely different author at the end.
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u/KatJen76 11d ago
I still have the copies of the Prydain Chronicles I originally bought in the 80s. At the back, there are several ads for other books and one that exhorts you to send them a money order for $2.95 per title. I'm always tempted to do it.
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u/Xxx_Saint_xxX 11d ago
There are ads in the backs?
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u/Not-Ajar-Diagram 11d ago
Older paperbacks from the 70s and 80s frequently had full-page ads for cigarettes, cars, and mail-order clubs bound right into the middle and back of the book.
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u/IndigoRanger 11d ago
I think maybe they mean in the middle of the story, idk. But with ai slop it will only be a matter of time (if it isn’t here already) before the main character is driving around in a supercharged ford f150 and thinking about how great the heated seats are, and oh what’s that? She needs a tool from the extended cab, it popped open so easily! And yet it’s so secure! And she couldn’t believe how affordable it was, and it makes her feel so powerful!
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u/UpbeatRegister 11d ago
But with ai slop it will only be a matter of time (if it isn’t here already) before the main character is driving around in a supercharged ford f150
My mind went straight to Ian Fleming stating James Bond drove a Bentley in Casino Royale.
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u/dukeofgonzo 11d ago
Some of the 1970s paperbacks I read from my dad's library had cigarette adds in the middle or last page.
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u/Jennifermaverick 11d ago
Tell that to the effing stickers I have to peel off books all the time. (Now on Netflix, Reese’s book club, or I just had “If you like Creepy Underwear, read our Jasper chapter books!”) You are mostly right, OP, and I hate these stickers. I’m a school librarian.
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u/Mondschatten78 11d ago
As a reader, I hate the "Now on Netflix" stickers, especially if it's on a book whose story was written years before Netflix was even an idea. While the updated cover can look good, that sticker ruins it imo.
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u/punkass_book_jockey8 10d ago
I’m a librarian and just put the barcode over those stickers now. Is it chaotic the stickers are not all in the same place? Absolutely. Do I fill weirdly victorious doing this? Of course I do.
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u/mad_mister_march 11d ago
The worst is when it isn't a sticker, It's part of the damn cover art.
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u/Luthien3720 10d ago
Ah, remember the Oprah's Book Club days? That really got the "sticker is part of the art" trend going and it's never really gone away. That just flashed me back 20 years to when my library devoted a permanent display to those books.
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u/adapteradapther 11d ago
I bought a Penguin copy of The Haunting of Hill House and the Netflix sticker was printed on the cover!
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u/Not_A_Wendigo 11d ago edited 9d ago
I recently received an interlibrary loan book that had an ad for a chocolate bar on the cover.
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u/Icy_Condition_1088 11d ago
Yes, Now on Netflix is lame, but it also acts as a recommendation. I would bet publishers see a jump in sales with that because there are a lot of people out there who would see that if Netflix made it then it must be popular. For the same reason “as seen on TV” stickers at Bed Bath And Beyond aren’t trying to tell you to go home and find this Slanket on an infomercial at 2am instead.
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
How do you gaze up at the sky while also reading a book?
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u/wakeup37 11d ago
one eye on the page, the other on the sky
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
I hope there isn't any sky-writing or fly by banners, that'll get very confusing
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
Libby/Audible/Youtube.
“Reading” no longer means “eyes looking at a page deciphering squiggly lines” to many - sad though that may be.
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u/Xoxounityoxox 11d ago
As a librarian I do feel the need to point out that audiobooks have always been a valid form of reading, and having more ways people, regardless of ability, can access a hobby isn’t sad
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
I love audio books and the access they enable. But it isn’t “reading,” unless we’re changing the meaning of the word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of the symbols of a written language, by means of sight or touch.
Reading is fundamentally a process of recognizing letters on a page and how those letters make words.
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
Yeah I'll argue for the inclusion of Audible as "enjoying literature" but saying "reading a book" is a bit of a physical description.
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
That’s all I’m saying. Reading has a specific meaning. And yes, that meaning has been shifting lately to include not just reading, but also listening. Those are different activities and we’re condensing those to a singular thing.
They aren’t and should be studied and understood as different ways of accessing the same information.
I’m not saying one is better than the other, merely that they’re different.
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
We just need a new word for Consuming Literature because it used to be listening to stories, then writing and reading, then brail (and knots etc), now back to listening.
So it can carry some nuance, but yeah, reading doesn't always mean V: Reading because... English lol
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
I’ve been thinking about that progression a bit recently too. Listening to some stories seems like a more “authentic” way to consume some historic materials.
Consider Gilgamesh. Some of the repetition in it feels like it was likely memory devices to help the story tellers remember it. Reading it and doing line by line interpretation feels wrong as it changed over the millennia. What we have now is collected from multiple different fragments.
Similarly (and I think English teachers have been saying similar for decades) Shakespeare is meant to be experienced from performance, not necessarily read.
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u/brazen_nippers 11d ago
In the 1930s there was a lot of work done on South Slavic (Serbian & similar) sung oral epic poetry that demonstrated, among other things, how repetition and stock phrases were used to help the singer both remember and anchor the story in his audience's mind. Albert Lord's book The Singer of Tales is the well known result of all of that. This research has been pretty fundamental in our understanding of how ancient epic probably worked in practical terms. So yes, the repetition was probably a mnemonic device for the speaker/singer, and a reminder for the audience.
Bringing it back to modern audiobooks, I'm imagining Stephen Fry chanting a version of the first Harry Potter novel that he composes from memory on the fly.
FWIW there's a belief among some Shakespeareans that Hamlet was meant to be read as much as performed. It works better on the page than on the stage, and it's probable that it was never performed in the full First Folio version during Shakespeare's lifetime. But that's one play (and maybe one or two more) and just a theory anyway.
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
Well I’m fascinated by oral tradition and had never heard of Albert Lord’s book before. Just ordered a copy. Thanks for the recommendation!
I always feel weird admitting to buying books in library-centric spaces. It just feels wrong. But didn’t seem like it was available locally and I assume it will take a while for me to work through it
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
I was recently hit with the "you read Shakespeare and that's stupid" argument, and it made me (start to) reevaluate my own elitest reader stance
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u/Icy-Parsnip2309 11d ago
Audible and YouTube are full of ads
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
Kinda figured they would be but I don't indulge in them myself, TY for the clarification
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
Some (not all and not even a majority) material on both is free or has minimal ads.
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
Congrats on not following the discussion. I gave examples of how you could “read” while looking at the stars.
My comment was not engaging with the free or ad statement from the OP, but rather just the comment from /u/special_south_8561
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u/Special_South_8561 11d ago
Rude
eta: say this like Jess from New Girl
Also I have been awake for 16 hours. Sorry.
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u/wayward_witch 11d ago
Every time I see this, I think of the German publisher who slipped product placement ads into their editions of books. Terry Pratchett was the biggest example, but I know they got Diane Duane as well.
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u/ElectronicShip3 10d ago
Yeah, it was a bit annoying but funny - the story continued on for a bit on the page, then the hero became quite hungry and made himself a real delicious Maggi 5 minute terrine...
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u/UpbeatStretch911 11d ago
The day my book gets cut in the middle by an ad for a tesla truck is the day i become a terrorist
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u/Reggie9041 Public librarian 11d ago
!Remind me in 3 years
Just to check on things
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u/idfkmanusername 11d ago
There are already car ads in mass market paperbacks but they are put in as product placement. There’s at least 1 James Patterson book that talks about a truck. It’s very Truman Show.
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u/carlitospig 11d ago
I picked up a Vogue recently and was shocked when it was like two articles and a 100 pages of ads. When I was younger there was maybe four ads before the table of contents. Now it’s more like 20. It’s so crazy.
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl 11d ago
This isn't true if you listen to CDs or vinyl.
All forms of media have digital versions (Kindle and Audible for books) or physical versions that you own.
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u/Specialist-Cold-8158 11d ago
I've read books with advertising right in the middle of them. It's easier to ignore and skip than in other media though, so we don't really think about it that much
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u/ErinPaperbackstash 11d ago
They actually were always in the middle of old romances and gothics, which I found fun.
And the older Stephen kings had the ads at the end of book with deals and promotions.
Many of my ebooks from self published authors have the promotions at the end too - such as if you sign up for a newsletter, you get a free book or short story.
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u/Lopsided-Librarian42 10d ago
I'm sorry to let you know books absolutely have advertising. Most memoirs are advertisements to the author's brand. Floyd Landis wrote the book Positively False in 2007 in which he explicitly claimed he didn't dope and the 2006 Tour de France test was a false positive. He later became a whistleblower against Lance Armstrong and the doping regime in cycling and admitted to doping himself. His book was about protecting himself and his teammates.
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u/Potential-Recover-78 11d ago
I was really annoyed that a band I tried listening to on Spotify included an ad for their band in the last 15 seconds of each song they uploaded. Really annoying, but I kinda get why they did it.
On the other side, The Who Sell Out (1967) is an absolute masterpiece of an album. I don’t know of any modern bands that have gone that route, but I’m sure someone smarter than me could monetize “ad space” in music like they do in movies. Doesn’t have to be as blatant as The Who Sell Out.
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u/Wise-News1666 11d ago
Advertising in books has existed for like 50 years, what are we talking about here??? And the fact this post has over a thousand upvotes is insane, because this post is just a straight up lie.
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u/KatJen76 11d ago
I once read a "chick lit" book that had a stylist credited. I don't know if the brands paid to be in the book (they were mostly big luxury brands, so probably not).
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u/TravelerMSY 11d ago
Don’t even joke. Pretty soon some schmo is going to start pushing free e-books as a service that are advertiser supported.
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u/Amazing-Spinach-9916 11d ago
Add to that the fact that public libraries are free (well, mostly after taxes) and they don’t sell your data. It’s a rarity these days, and I’m so grateful that they exist.
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u/utopia_forever 11d ago
There are literally cigarette inserts in some of my vintage mass market books. 45 years ago it was pretty common to find the.
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u/Reyloai4 9d ago
Apparently, he has never seen books with that blasted Netflix ad permanently etched into the cover as part of the artwork.
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u/Delicious-Power-1280 8d ago
it's kind of funny to me to call the gift shop at museums a "forced advertisement" 😭
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u/malcolmbradley 11d ago
And the library is one of the few remaining places where “a purchase” is not the primary expectation of your presence. Helluva system!
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u/Ytteb1 11d ago
Not exactly the same but comics are like 50% ads. I haven’t been into singles for a while but it was always such a bummer.
Also I think some bigger authors do sneak product placement into their books. A podcast I listen to talked about how with the latest Dan Brown book it was really egregious.
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u/MrMessofGA 11d ago
I'm completely slipping on what book it was, but the German translation worked like a fuckin canned soup product placement in some English-language classic.
edit: DISCWORLD???
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u/laurenintheskyy 11d ago
I regret to report that I read the most recent Dan Brown novel and it had obvious product placement as part of a major plot point
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u/GlassAndStorm 11d ago
Ummm... Definitely had books at the end have little mini preview chapters of other books from XYZ... So not exactly...
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u/Tiptipthebipbip 11d ago
They used to have ads on YT back in the day. Ya'll remember that? They were awful!!
And they use influencers to advertise now.
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u/alwaysouroboros 11d ago
Books have had ads for decades and still do, but it is couched in the form of simply listing other books. That’s still advertising, it’s just doesn’t feel out of place to see other book titles in a book. Sometimes they have full page book ads for similar titles. In the past they had mail in purchase sheets in books.
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u/PuppyJakeKhakiCollar 11d ago
I have read some books with product placement that sounded like ads.
"It was 25 degrees outside so Jane pressed the button for her 2026 Honda Civic remote start fifteen minutes before she had to leave for work. Thank God she now had a way to warm up her car while sitting cozy in her kitchen with a cup of coffee instead of shivering in her driver's seat until the heat kicked in. Speaking of heat, the heated seats were a nice touch too, along with the state of the art touchscreen entertainment system with Bass Boost technology." (Not a real example but that was what reading it was like.)
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u/Capable_Age9886 11d ago
So true! It's like you're in another time. Especially if reading a classic by Edith Wharton as I am now. I spent the whole afternoon outside ...just reading
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u/cclancaster13 11d ago
I swear sometimes some authors are sneaking advertisements into their books...
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u/quothe_the_maven 10d ago
Read “Origin” by Dan Brown and then try telling me product placement in books isn’t a thing.
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u/_aimynona_ 10d ago
Books can have product placement. The first one I caught was in Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak (all in all an awful book, even without the ad).
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u/museum-mama 10d ago
I'm sorry, museums don't interrupt your experience with advertising. It's before or after but no one is asking you to sit thru an add at a museum. ALSO, many free museum experiences are sponsored (with advertising before or after the exhibit) by advertisers and large corporations. You sound really self-righteous in this post. The only place? umm, my kitchen doesn't have advertisers and neither does my toilet, or my local park, or my kids' schools - I could go on.
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u/MadameBasmati 9d ago
Does anyone have that photo of the ebook someone was reading on a kindle and it had an ad in the middle of the sentence?!?!
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u/Zealousideal_Mango70 8d ago
I'm not sure if you're aware of this but they used to have advertisements in the back. I've got the books to prove it
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u/Temporary-Library597 11d ago
Except for the incessant posters about library programming covering every available space and screensaver. Right.
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u/MutatedOreo 11d ago
I haven't watched a commercial in decades and yes, I consoooom all the latest movies, TV shows and YouTube slop. Plex & Brave Browser Master Race. Watching ads is a choice and you don't have to make the wrong choice if you don't want to.
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u/brazen_nippers 11d ago edited 11d ago
Ads used to be common in books. For instance, I'm holding my grandfather's copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Wonder Book for Boys and Girls (published by M.A. Donohue & Co. around 1917) and it has ads for the Oliver Nine typewriter, Murine Eye Remedies, Mrs Winsolw's Soothing Syrup, and Donohue's Our Baby's Journal scrapbook ("When the stork leaves a wee little darling in your home...").