Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content? Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn’t risk alienating its loyal Kindle base with dirty tricks like this, so it’s safe to assume it’ll be at least somewhat opt-in.
An abundance of free or reduced-price content would widen the appeal of the reader — I imagine many people are put off e-books by the idea that they are not getting their money’s worth. As offensive as the idea of inserting ads into a book is to me (and surely to the average reader), it’s almost certainly part of a value proposition which increases the utility of these expensive little buggers.
The wording of the patent requests also includes the language “in response to a consumer request for content,” which could probably be massaged into referring to downloaded books that have been paid for, but more easily fits streamed or dynamically generated stuff like news or Google Books content. There’s also talk of including the ad in printed versions of said content, which bothers me a bit more than the other part. At any rate, I’m convinced that advertisements are unlikely to appear in the kinds of books and publications you’re paying full price for right now, so if this is ever implemented, you’ll probably (hopefully) be able to read your Vanity Fair unmolested.
See it would bother me… it is like putting ads inside a movie.. screw that… enough is enough.. screw these companies sticking ads up our asses.. bigger ads, more ads.. some places are no go.. some places are ours a place to escape and google and amazon need to stick their vampiric suck us dry of money heads in a blender
Quite angry and a bit funny comment. I agree with you completely. Enough is enough.
mm I’m not agree with both of you, amazon can do everything they want, its like when you see a commercial in TV, dont like that stuff you see on your screen … but finally you see it … anyway it really doesn’t matter. No ads, no more big news on amazon.
Its different with TV. You can always change the channel.
Am I missing something here?
You are forgetting the choice… either you pay for the book (it has no ads) or you get it free (full of relevant ads) so those ‘rotten’ ads are serving a purpose to those that want a downloadable book.
Surely that’s a worthwhile patent application?
I agree with you about choice.. but I also think people need to stop and consider when enough is enough… do we want a world where every building, every book, everything we see is covered in ads..
You’ve made some great points. I absolutely don’t want ANY friggin’ ads in my books. I think if I somehow purchased a book with ads I would demand my money back especially if the ads ACTUALLY OBSCURED the content; I’ve seen this crap plenty of times on the web.
Thanks for the link love.
As much as ads that ruin the world of any story telling medium bother me (in video games, movies, or otherwise), the reaction I’ve seen from people has largely been that the ads would be fine with them if the books were free, which is quite reasonable in my book.
I agree. I think Hulu is a good example of this. While people still buy episodes of TV shows on iTunes or Amazon on Demand commercial free, others don’t mind watching a few 30 second ads to get a free episode.
I completely agree. It must be worth my time to allow such placements.
Just wait until the ads are animated flash. So much for getting any reading done.
I didn’t minds on the internet so much until they became animated & now I block everything as a result.
As somebody who has applied for patents and trademarks, I will say that all you need to do to prevent a patent from being granted, or a trademark for that matter is to provide prior art which encompasses the patent claims DURING the “published for opposition process”
The FIRST THING a patent attorney that works for the US government is going to do is Google information regarding the patent claims.
TechCrunch has VERY high page rank.
INCORPORATING ADVERTISING IN ON-DEMAND GENERATED CONTENT
20090171750
By putting the title of the invention and the application number into this post, it will be found by the examining attorney for the government.
So now that we have established that, if anybody can provide links to prior art, the patent will most likely be challenged, or denied without a re-application reducing the scope of the claims.
Do your worst people, it’s your right as Americans to oppose any application.
Thanks to “Chris – July 4th, 2009 at 4:48 pm PDT”
for this info that “INCORPORATING ADVERTISING IN ON-DEMAND GENERATED CONTENT
20090171750″ that we can fight it
“By putting the title of the invention and the application number into this post, it will be found by the examining attorney for the government” so the extensive debate that must come to this application will. I am very much against it for it will take away from the sanctuary of the book and what was intended. There is lots of place for marketing/advertising and it does not have to be inside books whether they are hardcover or electronic. Is nothing sacred to these people.?! I want to hear from the authors themselves and the book designers in this debate; what might they fear with such a patent?
Prior Art-wise, how is this going to be differentiated from any other textual content? How does one define a book? A downloadable e-book with a dynamic link to an ad farm?
The model and the IP seem to be grasping, for me.
The first claim is very broad.
“1. A method of providing printed content in response to a request for the printed content, the method comprising:obtaining a request for content;in response to the request, obtaining a digital image corresponding to the requested content;selecting an advertisement to be included in the requested content;including the selected advertisement within the requested content; andgenerating an on-demand printed copy of the requested content including the selected advertisement. ”
It’s almost like a verbatim claim on contextual advertising than what they are really claiming.
Look at claim 1 and see that there is a syntax error in the last segment of claim one:
“andgenerating an on-demand printed copy of the requested content including the selected advertisement”
To have a syntax or grammatical error in your main claim(claim 1) is sloppy and shows carelessness.
Having that broad of a dependent claim 1 is not typical either. The 40 or so dependent tree style claims are actually describing the embodiment of the utility which is again, not standard.
You may know this already, but a company can not file for a patent, only individuals. A patent can then be re-assigned to a company thereafter. I am thinking perhaps developers wrote this which is often times the case, since it is very easy to file for a patent cheaply on the internet.
This patent may not be that great anyway, because it goes into great deal describing how the utility is used in the end result, instead of focusing on how it works.
my 2 cents. It may still get approved without a problem.
This patent is so specific to an embodiment, it may not be usable in a legal case, but rather just to menace other providers that may not have access to legal help.
I am not an attorney, but I have received a bunch of legal threats based on IP. Not one of them was ever realized, out of many from some well known companies.
“It’s almost like a verbatim claim on contextual advertising than what they are really claiming.”
should be “It’s almost like a verbatim claim on contextual advertising rather than what they are really claiming.”
That’s all I am going to fix, fill in the grammatical errors, this is a holiday LOL. I’m going to the beach.
Hi, when you are using a hyphen as parenthesis the “correct” way is to open and close the clause with hyphens:
“I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation.” – This is wrong
“I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon — but more because it’s a no-lose situation.” – This is right
Hey Mark…let me know when you get around to my blog and twitter accounts. I’m sure I have lots of mistakes that need your attention. LOL
I respectfully disagree: The dash is used as a spacer, like an ellipsis (ever read Tristram Shandy?). It doesn’t necessarily have to enclose the clause. Besides, the portion after the dash reads better with a comma. A dash would indicate the second item followed directly from “I wouldn’t mind,” when in fact it depends on the “partially…”
Thanks for pointing it out, though.
I was actually kidding, lol. Felt like being an ass. Good post though.
damn, i got punked! well played.
Never defrost food at room temperature. ,
A sort of books Spotify? Sounds a great idea
I actually think this would be really cool. I like looking at ads—they are actually good sometimes. Aside from that, if it would bring down the price of the books, it would be awesome. I think the books should be $0.99 or $1.99 and have ads. That would make a big difference.
Now, I buy a book on the Kindle for almost full price but I don’t get to take full advantage of it. For example, if a friend want’s to read the book too, I can’t give it to them. So, for the lower price, it would rock. The world needs new ad formats. After all, I never watch live TV and always skip the commercials. Having ads in books could show a lot of potential.
You probably have not paid “full price” for an e-book. Amazon is paying the publishers several dollars more than it is charging you. See:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/137/the-evolution-of-amazon.html?page=0%2C2
E-books are highly subsidized materials and a steal for the consumer. Personally I cannot go near them because I enjoy my paper magazines and books too much, and the Internet fills the electronic void. There probably will come a point when I succumb to a Kindle. That point is probably when it becomes a $20 device. At that point my answer would be, “Why not try it?”
I worry greatly because book distributors are getting to the point where they cannot do business with Amazon due to the price deflation Amazon has spearheaded. One of two things can happen with the additional, forthcoming price deflation that e-books will cause: The volume sales of books skyrockets to unbelievable levels, giving the book industry a pay increase by volume rather than a decrease by pricing. Alternatively, if sales do not increase dramatically, more book material could turn into cheap garbage, leaving us with the question, “What happened to all the cool books?” The latter scenario reflects exactly what happened to manufactured goods in the U.S. The big box stores are the parallel to Amazon.
If you read this and thought, “The distributor is not necessary and it will be good to cut out this middle man”, consider this: When U.S. manufacturing companies could no longer compete with China, many of them became distributors of Chinese goods. So today’s distributor of cheap garbage was yesterdays manufacturer of high quality goods. Expect the roles to change dynamically.
Reducing costs to consumers though highly efficient delivery, like an electronic book is a great thing. Squeezing too much revenue out of the book industry, that would be catastrophic.
Ads in your books, ads in your food, ads in your bed, ads in your car, ads in your clothes, ads in your house, ads in your hair.
Soon there will be no products left, just ads.
You forgot ads on the foreheads of people you meet on the street.
I find the most annoying things about the way ads are done is their format: capture your attention and appeal to some basic instincts (traditional ads) or send you to a store to make a immediate purchase (google ads). I find the later almost useless, because I will always do some research instead of assuming google will give me the store that will provide me the best deal. The traditional ads can be entertaining, and certainly effective on a sub conscious level.
What I would like to see is more informative advertising. I’m not sure what I mean, but generally it should be something that tries to go beyond grabbing your attention.
There actually has been cases where consumers have react badly towards ads… in the university of alberta bathrooms they tried ads above the urinals and they were constantly vandalized. At what point does someone turn this against amazon.. tired of ads on your kindle while your in the bathroom… get our ebook… $200 cheaper.. sure you pay more for a book, but then again do you really want to be sold while reading about edward saving bella… ebooks stories that don’t try to sell you anything..
I think what would be useful is a way at the end of the book to see similiar genre books or ways to send the books to friends as gifts..see the thing about a good book is it makes you hungry for more… just have to feed that hunger at the right time.. which is when the last page ends and you are looking for something more to read…
I guess I just don’t get big companies anymore.. google making videos annoying with popups.. bigger flash rollover ads that get in the way of content.. links to sites that suck it is as if the accountants have taken over the asylum… said f u to people…the googolian vampires of the internet..
so when you’re ready to roll out your checkbook to start paying to read websites.. and to access content, let the sites/content owners know… they will gladly take your cash….
oh wait.. what’s that you say… you don’t want to pay, nor do you want ads, you simply want everything for free, spoonfed to you…
there’s a word for that.. parasite.. or douche… your choice…
So you basically derived all that.. wow you sure know people.. first off I would pay for the book, as I believe in paying for things worthwhile.. I actually pay for all my music and the shows I watch and do not use torrent sites.. Can you say the same? So that point you can take and shove up your ass… the next point about ads..
your right I have no problem with ads.. they power the internet.. I am just saying the ads companies use are ineffective.. because one day a guy like me if I am able to make my app successful will come along and create an ad interface that actually cares what URLs the ads link to.. which is the flaw in every advertising interface… I understand youtube needs ads but the only thing I think is how fast can I close the annoying popup… as for adsense I do not trust them to take me to a good site so I only click on them to generate money for websites I like without actually looking at the pages they open..
Hope that google won’t place ads in my toilet paper
obvious space balls reference. !!!prior art found!!!
I am an academic an an advocate of the Kindle. I bought the first gen knowing it would be outdated by the time i got it but I bought it none the less. I knew ads were coming because I worked in publishing in the 80’s and could see the writing on the wall. We produced the first ever CD-ROM encyclopedia at a fraction of our print cost.
Back in 1195 I came up with the concept of forced ads on CD-ROMS today they flood the Web. skip this ad or your program will resume in 30 seconds. I built a company for two idiots who couldn’t see what was next. we had websites up and running in 1993. The two idiots closed the company in 1996 saying there was no future in the Internet.
Today I own digiEd Incorporated an educational technology company that focuses on the k-16 marketplace. And yes there will be ads in textbooks soon enough. E-Books no doubt but only if the books are free and the ads are relevant. Nike in a phys ed textbook, pfizer in a chemistry book, MOMA in an art history book. the ads will be dynamic and streamed to the e-reader. They will be relevant or they will be a reverse killer app. Behavioral technology will allow for this. Not necessarily opt in only. Advertising needs to be focused to be successful. You can’t force feed today or you will lose the user. Think of a GM ad in an automotive technology book. It matters the content as well. Hard sell won’t work unless it comes in magazine form which is also available on the Kindle. Newspapers as well.
I blogged once on how the iPhone was a game changer a watershed moment in technology and got laughed off the blog. I’m telling you know the ads will be there and they will be relevant and behavioral based. they will be dynamic and interactive. It is the next step.
wow, check out the big brain on nostradamus.
LOL
What application was that purple monkey from? I remember he use to sit on my desktop and juggle bannanas. I cant remember his purpose or his name, anyone know?
omg i was gunna ask the same thing
everyone had him in the days of windows ‘95, aol dialup and aim fanfare.
he was the shit until i realized he was nothing more than spyware :(
WAT WAS HIS NAME??? lol
FOUND HIM!!
image was saved as bonzi.jpg
his name was bonzi buddy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBUDDY
You rock! Thanks! He was pretty entertaining but annoying at times because my computer was so slow back then and he ate up all my system resources he’d start talking and everything would freeze.
He was a nice little desktop companion though ;-).
yeah, he’s bonzibuddy. for some reason my answering comment didn’t get through. did I flag myself?
We are bombarded by advertising. It’s actually amusing that they can find a new way to intrude on our lives.
It’s just the way things work. Advertising is spam. Stand in a grocery store and try to find someplace where you are exposed to less than 200 colorful labels and ads (good luck).
We are living in an information age, spam is the noise, and we have reached the point that the noise level is already above 70% of the information transmitted (perhaps 90%).
Most people can remember more ads than true facts. Our brains are full of spam.
I think that what Amazon is actually trying to do is to preempt an era of rampant book “piracy”.
When enough people have Kindles, Sony Readers etc. the book publishing industry could experience the same fate that befell the recording industry with the proliferation of mp3 players.
Books tend to be “revered” compared to music, so many people will keep paying, but enough would prefer to avoid paying $20+ for a book.
If the business model changes from selling the book to selling the reading device (where Amazon is now leader) and ad space inside the book (where they will be the leader if given the patent), Amazon keeps making money. Oh, and authors don’t…
It is not exactly the same because there is a charm to a paper book.
There already ads on your morning coffee glass, circulars under your door, subway, search engine blogs and other free content, and previews before the movie, and between your tv shows. And that’s just in a typical day.
If you put ads in paid content people are gonna get pissed off.
My dad has a patent for this sort of thing by the way, so I know there is prior art :P
Oh, now you guys got me all distracted by the grammatical issue!
I’d have to go check my reference books, but I do believe in the instance cited, that –
“I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon — but more because it’s a no-lose situation.”
may not be correct but does convey a strong clarity. (It somehow really doesn’t look right.)
Setting that aside…
The publishing industry –at least in paper format — has been very short-sighted in the past. Publishers who would try to maximize sales by offering discounted sales to customers directly undermined their Brick & Mortar retail sellers. Distributor sales reps would push a title onto the “best seller list” by taking big chain store buyers out to lunch and making a deal for the buyer to place order they wouldn’t actually have to take delivery on — just to bump the numbers.
For good or ill, Amazon has certainly changed the face of book distribution. To make this move, which, let’s face it, was probably inevitable that someone would, could not only change distribution and marketing, but also writing itself.
We already have “product placement” in movies where a box office star performs double duty in role of character as well as celebrity endorsement by holding branded soda or beer can in such a way that the company logo is clearly visible.
Perhaps some wouldn’t mind ads WITH books, afterall you will probably be able to somehow block them. But can you so easily overlook and block [hyperlinked] branded product placement within an author’s text –
“The bartender at [Name of Real Life bar w/link] absentmindedly polished the [name of bar surface available thru company w/link] using [Shamwow link], John sat at the end, smoking [brandname cigarette w/link which can be disabled by parental control for reading by minors].
” ‘Hey Sam,’ John says dejectedly, ‘pour me another cool and refreshing [brand name w/link]. It may just improve my mood.’
“Suddenly, light streamed in. There she stood, wearing the latest in must-have fashion [name brand jeans w/link] on sale at [online store link or B&M retail stores]. And John knew–he had to find out where she worked out to keep that hot trim figures [foot note link to gyms, work out dvds, Wii and diet programs]
“John thought, ‘THIS [hyperlinked to AA, rehab facilities, churches, spiritual coaches etc] could turn my life around. This could be the beginning of something great!’ ”
–or not.
Accepting ads with books is merely the “Camel’s Nose in the Tent”
go away amazon with your add’s i don’t want them not even if that spares me money. Things like books, games and movies should be free of advertising or only for an other product of the same type. I want a clean book with not some ugly add with a white backdrop which says: GO BUY THINGS ON AMAZON. Cause the person who has it alrdy buys on amazon. So only the ppl who he gives the book too to read are advertised, but that person could tell that too them anywayz, no add’s needed
Oh great, now this makes 2 patents that Amazon will be infringing of ours.
I submitted the “Progressive price reduction by sponsorship subsidization” patent a few years ago and recently published.
I love America!
If Amazon gets theirs granted and uses it the way you think it will… you know what to do! wait six months for “research” purposes and then sue them for infringement, lost revenue, and predatory business practices.
that image is terrifying.
wow, and some of you guys actually installed bonzai buddy? for shame…
great whats next in music advertisment? you’re gonna be listening to a song and its gonna pause play some ad then resume…oh wait if u want the non ad version fetch over an extra $1
Sad.. very sad.
I hate ads too, but an ad-supported book model will work. Talk about contextual targeting, especially with non-fiction books, I’m thinking, such as how-to books, reference books, whatever.
My point exactly. Check my reply and excuse the typos.
“There’s also talk of including the ad in printed versions of said content,”
Which, when it includes advertising… Amazon could no longer distribute using low-cost USPS Media Mail… i.e. as a printed book, DVD, or memory chip.
Sort of eats into the cost/benefit idea…
aaaaaah…. you might want to double check that assertion against the regulations.
“Media Mail can not contain advertising except for incidental announcements of books.”
from http://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/mediamail.htm
So they certainly could by limiting the advertising to promoting other books which is a logical starting place anyway.
For other non-book advertisements, shipping would slide over to “Bound Printed Matter” (eg magazines) which is also a low-cost shipping method. (I’m not familiar with that category, but appears it could be potentially as cheap or cheaper–I don’t know if that category requires min # pieces per mailing)
I’m skeptical that amazon would significantly drop the price of e-books that contained ads. Perhaps at first, but I think their books will eventually be full of ads and still cost $9.99.
This is just the start of the slippery slope. Today they will only put small, unobtrusive ads in the free books. Then it will move to the reduced price books. But it won’t be long before some marketing genius says, the book is a best seller. It’s gonna sell with or without the ads, so we might as well put the ads in the book and make more money. After that, it will be next to impossible to find books without ads.
I completely endorse this for textbooks. Students are really being hit hard by overpriced textbooks. A few ads from relevant advertisers — say job sites or even Amazon itself — to bring down the cost of textbooks would be a huge help to students, and it would win their goodwill.
I am not happy with this idea, because it starts to wander me where it will end? They will start with one or two ads, but later they will put ads on every page. Further more, e-books often cost as much as paper issue. E-book with with ads should have the price of not more than 1/3 of regular paper book price.
Are you effing kidding me? Do people not see the bigger picture here, ads in books, fine, if people will buy them no problem, but a patent on ADVERTISING in a MEDIUM?!?! Are you nuts.
We might as well file a patent to advertise in a magazine or a newspaper, or the side of the street for that matter. This whole idea of patenting an established business process is absolutely bonkers.
Furthermore, did Amazon even read the patenting requirements? i.e.
Is there an inventive step?
Your invention must not be obvious to someone with a good knowledge of the subject.
- anyone who has worked in advertising will say that this is “obivious”, there is nothing novel, or ingenious about throwing an ad in between pages, be they print or 0010011010.
Furthermore,
You cannot get a patent for: a way of performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business.
this is according to the UK Intellectual Property Office, which I assume has some minor differences with US patent law, but no so great as to allow a “way of performing business”.
I swear though, if this passes and Amazon gets a patent for this I’m leaving the U.S. for good, the country will have hit a new law in legal statute.
Good point. I thought the application seemed a bit broad, but I’m no expert so I thought I’d let someone else tackle it.
Does any of you realize the impact an ad can have on the artistic integrity of a book? Imagine an ad for “cheap tickets to Ireland” inserted between the paragraphs of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”…
Agreed, that’s the problem the effect it will have on what authors write. If literature serves ads, it becomes PR, like films that sell products have zero value as culture. We consume in the West more than the planet can replenish, we need to consumer less, we do not need more ads.
> Surely they would never allow advertisements
> to be placed in books which you have purchased
> legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out
> of our heads.
I purchase DVDs at full price, yet am forced to watch advertisements for other movies before I’m allowed to watch the one I’ve paid for.
+1 What you’ve said is very true and scary.
I’m surprised I didn’t see anyone else mentioning another possibility – not just subsidising *content* but subsidising the *device*.
The main complaint I’ve heard from people about the kindle is not the cost of content, but the cost of the kindle itself. So why not put out an ad-supported version of the kindle? Drop a couple hundred bucks off the price, show an ad before every piece of content viewed, and require that the user be online to view their content. Later, give the user an option to “upgrade” to the non-ad kindle w/ a $200 upgrade fee, or something similar.
Suddenly you have a low-cost way for people to try the kindle, and if they like it and want to get rid of the ads, a $200 OTA software “upgrade” later and they’re ad-free as well.
I could even see a blended model – $50 off the device, 10% off each piece of content – in exchange for those ads.
And, of course, the most obvious one would be that normally free content – blogs and such – would go back to being free, as long as you opt-in to ads on them. Of course, then the question becomes if there’s a rev-share deal for content providers, or how that works…
I definitely like this idea. I wasn’t against paying for the content but rather the device. A lot of the content can be formated into the kindle so I’m not too worried about that. The ads wouldn’t be a problem for me at all, as long as it’s not all over the place.
http://ziggytek.com/
Interesting, I hadn’t considered that idea… I think of the Kindle as a sort of loss leader to begin with. I guess it depends on what kind of ad rates they can wrangle.
“textbooks for free…win good will”"….and what about the author’s time/expertise? Students don’t have good will toward a publisher or even their university, as evidenced by the number of students who try to cheat an access controlled educational website required for their course and education. Amazon shouldn’t get a patent for their “invention” for all the reasons cited, but it does tip their hand as to the mindset of the organization. The author creates the goods in the first place, but the real money is made by the distributor who clubs the author/publisher to bits with severe discounts and promises of marketing while keeping advertising revenues.
I think Adobe and Yahoo already did something a lot like this:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9825409-7.html
“Yahoo and Adobe are bringing pay-per-click ads to Adobe’s Portable Document Format so that publishers can serve up ads inside PDFs distributed on Web sites and over e-mail that are contextually relevant to the content.
The text advertisements appear in a panel to the right of the content in the PDF and are subject matter matched using keywords and analysis of associated concepts. The ads are dynamic, meaning different ads can pop up at different times and clicking on an ad takes you to the advertiser Web site.”
Books published before 1900 frequently had advertising material included. Most often for other books, or printed material. Examples of this can be found on books.google.com. You will have to dig around for books published in the 19th century, but they are not hard to do ..
The real issue is how will the Ads be presented to the Kindle owner? Will the owner be forced to see the Ads on every page? Will he/she be able to easily skip over them if they are not interested?
It will also be interesting to see the patent. Ads have been in printed material for a long time, without anyone ever hinting that the publisher needed patent protection. Will Amazon somehow claim patent rights to any advertising in e-books, no matter how it is presented?
In the long run, this is a market-based issue. If people buy whatever they are selling .. then it must be OK. If they don’t buy .. then Amazon will get the message.
I think cheap books had advertising built-in, but I myself have a large collection of 19th-century literature and have seen almost no ads or ephemera suggesting there once were such things, at least in the high-quality editions, leather and such. Those big magazines like those Dickens published in, however, were probably FULL of it.
I must have bought 5 or 6 books with advertising in, back in the 1980s. I don’t mean adverts in the last few pages, because that’s quite common, but a bunch of advertisement pages right in the middle of the book. I was buying American SF imports, here in the UK, so there may have been only one or two publishers involved. It was so annoying that I was motivated to spend a long time carefully slicing out the offending pages with a razor. So: prior art!
I would have to say that I am 99% against this. It tick’s me off I pay so much for cable, and 50% of my time is spent watching ads. I also stopped most of my print magazine subscriptions due to so many ads I couldn’t find the content.
But, on the flip side. I do like ads that are “entirely” relevant to what I am watching, reading, browsing at the time. So if handled correctly, ads that are explicitly relevant to my interests are not always bad.
To over-do the adds, make them random and irrelevant, and to place them in things I paid a hefty sum for. NO Thank you.
Otherwise, all things in moderation.
Maybe people who want to send a message to Amazon regarding their dislike of this application for this patent should consider an organized moratorium period of not buying anything from Amazon to send a strong message to them that they could economically tally. Say the month of AUGUST; imagine if it was SEPTEMBER or DECEMBER.
I think people should not offer these ‘Pay for no ads’ options. It is an open admission that ads on the net are disruptive, useless and uninformative. That should not be so.
WOWIO already has this patent. Good luck in getting this one to pass through Amazon.
We’re messing with the very essence of the fount of human knowledge here. Wayne’s point about advertising ‘cheap tours to Ireland’ in copies of Ulysees is excellent. ‘Guided History tours of the Holy Land’ in the Bible next? Ads for a fine Zinfandel on the page where the water is turned into wine? Apples right at the beginning? We need to put a value on art & literature and realise it needs to stand for what it is and not be molested by 3rd parties wanting to make more $$$. No authors worth their salt will agree to this bastardisation of his/her work.
Ads everywhere, now in the books :(
Content is to computer as book is to Kindle. It’s all ad supported in some fashion. Whether printed word or broadcast, ads subsidize the cost of content. Amazon would be foolish to deploy a product that so totally disrupts the reading experience that nobody would want to use it. We will, no doubt, always have a choice between buying the book or downloading it and if downloaded, paying full price or getting it ad supported. As long as the authors are properly compensated along the way, everybody wins. Low cost content to consumers supported by advertisers. Think of the money you’ll save!
I would not be in support of advertising in books even if it was a choice, because that would give companies that advertise (many companies) more power to discourage certain controversal book sales, thus limiting the people’s freedom of knowledge.
For example, suppose the US Military becomes a huge advertiser with Amazon, and pays millions to have ads inserted in military & war history eBooks. Now, a new controversial book is released, possibly denouncing the actions of the US Military (for whatever reason).
The US Military would not be pleased, and would “threaten” to stop advertising (and paying millions) to Amazon if they continue to sell that book flat-out. Amazon would be forced to either side with the author (and lose millions) or side with the advertiser (and hurt freedoms).
Replace “US Military” with pretty much any government, business, or organization otherwise and you can begin to see why this is a bad idea.
Obviously, Amazon can do whatever they want and customers can simply go elsewhere, but it is difficult to do that, the larger they grow.
It should be obvious that advertising has already hurt television greatly, with cases of businesses threatening to halt advertising based on program content.
True many have used advertising as a blunt weapon against free speech they disagree with. The Olive Garden incident with David Letterman after the Palin joke immediately comes to mind.