Off the Artistic Roll Call?
June 14th, 2007 by 
Bradley Denton
“Here’s the deal, folks. You do a commercial – you’re off the artistic roll call, forever.”
— Bill Hicks, Rant in E Minor
A while back, I was present at a group discussion regarding the future of the business of publishing fiction – and the discussion naturally turned to the business of publishing fiction on the Web.
I didn’t have much to say because I don’t know much about the business of publishing fiction in any medium, much less on the Web. (This may explain my meteoric career trajectory to date.)
But I stupidly opened my mouth — and, even more stupidly, said what I was thinking — when someone suggested, with a fair bit of enthusiasm, that all professional fiction published on the Web would eventually be free to the consumer because professional fiction writers would be paid through advertising subsidies. In other words, Web publishers would make their money entirely through selling banner ads and popups for Coke, Ford, Apple, Nike, Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft, or whomever . . . and then pay their authors from those revenues.
And what I stupidly said was this:
“I dunno . . . I can’t help thinking of the Neil Young lyric: ‘Ain’t singing for Pepsi/Ain’t singing for Coke/I don’t sing for nobody/Makes me look like a joke.’ I mean . . . I don’t want my work to be about selling some product. I want it to be about what it’s about.”
So now there’s a perfectly nice, intelligent person out there who thinks I’m a grade-A jerk. And y’know, I can’t blame that person. Because it really was a pretty stupid and rude thing for me to say, and I’m sure it sounded like a slam . . . when all the speaker was doing was suggesting what probably would (and perhaps should) happen.
And, really, already is happening.
Will it be such a terrible thing in the long run? After all, creative content on radio and television has been advertiser-supported for decades — and hasn’t that worked out fine? Why should prose fiction or any other creative endeavor be any different?
Heck, actors and musicians have sold themselves and their work on behalf of unrelated products over and over again, to the tune of gazillions. So why shouldn’t authors get a piece of that action? (They already have, a few times: Here’s William S. Burroughs for Nike and Stephen King for American Express.)
Besides, it’s not as if advertisers would ever expect to have any input regarding the content of what they’re paying for, is it?
Okay, there I go being a grade-A jerk again. Remember, irony is dead, so sarcasm is bad. Consumers do not like it. Write like you’re sincere, goddamn it.
The sincere truth, though, is that even though I truly do feel bad for having been stupid and rude that day –
That’s still what I think.
Posted in Art, Brad, People, Pop. Culture, Writing | 
11 Comments »
June 15th, 2007 at 12:22 am
So… you’d object to being published in any print magazine primarily funded by advertising?
June 15th, 2007 at 7:48 am
I’ll join you on the jerk bench, Denton, because this is a major hobby horse of mine. I *hate* television for that very reason, and movies are now filled with pre-movie commercials as well.
What it does is turn storytelling into a delivery medium for selling people stuff. And that has all kinds of negative effects.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:04 am
“Well…there I was sitting down on the couch in my pajamas with my eldest son. He was watching TV. I was doing one of my favorite things — I was tallying up all the money I passed up in endorsements over the years (laughter) and thinking of all the fun I could have had with it. Suddenly I hear “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!” I look up. But instead of the silhouettes of the hippie wannabes bouncing around in the iPod commercial, I see my boys!
Oh, my God! They sold out!
Now…what I know about the iPod is this: It is a device that plays music. Of course their new song sounded great, my guys are doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old tape operator Jimmy Iovine somewhere. Wily. Smart. Now, personally, I live an insanely expensive lifestyle that my wife barely tolerates. I burn money, and that calls for huge amounts of cash flow. But I also have a ludicrous image of myself that keeps me from truly cashing in. (laughter) You can see my problem. Woe is me.
So the next morning, I call up Jon Landau — or as I refer to him, “the American Paul McGuinness” — and I say, “Did you see that iPod thing?” And he says, “Yes.” And he says, “And I hear they didn’t take any money.” And I said, “They didn’t take any money?!” And he says, “No.” I said, “Smart, wily Irish guys.” (laughter) Anybody…anybody…can do an ad and take the money. But to do the ad and not take the money…that’s smart. That’s wily. I say, “Jon, I want you to call up Bill Gates or whoever is behind this thing and float this: A red, white, and blue iPod signed by Bruce “the Boss” Springsteen. Now remember, no matter how much money he offers, don’t take it!” (laughter)
from this.
Morgan: check out Sundance Cinemas, if there is one in your area.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Is any of that advertising revenue making its way into the pockets of the writers?
I don’t like the idea of advertisers having input into what writers write. On the other hand, if advertising helps increase payment for writers…it’s a silver lining, at the least.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Back in the 1940s Virgil Thomson wrote a book about the ways in which a composer made a living affected the content of his music. I think the same is true with writers. A writer of film scripts faces a very different set of constraints than a writer of short stories who makes a living in some other way.
At this point in history I can think of nothing worse that writers being dependent on web advertising for income. I fear it would narrow the horizons of science fiction in many ways.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:32 am
There are two problems. The first is that advertisers can be induced by very small but very loud groups to oppose “controversial content,” by the lights of that group, and thus exert undue influence on content. Art needs room to be controversial.
Second, online advertisers are not like magazine advertisers or television advertisers. They count on click-throughs to sell content.
This means that their financial interests are in opposition both to the reader of the fiction (because reading a story requires a deep reverie — it doesn’t work to skim fiction) and the writer, whose work is being clicked away from.
Otoh, we need some way of coming up with a financial model for online content, and controlling copying just doesn’t work.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:37 am
I’ve written on both sides of the fence–fiction I submit for traditional publication and fiction published on the web and mediated by advertising and I’ve got to say they are two different animals. The stuff I’ve had published on the web was different in that it was more like television–large projects produced by many people. But one of the serious constraints on it was that it was tied to some product. There was the project about L.A. gangs where we had a PG 13 ‘age gate.’ We worked really hard to make our gang guys complex, aesthetically interesting, and yet not glamorous. But it was weird to have someone who had a meth habit, lousy teeth, and probably a pretty long arrest record, who did not swear beyond the dictates of the PG 13 rating.
But on the other hand, magazines are also shaped by the advertising they carry. Years ago, someone said to me that The New Yorker does not carry fiction that would really harm the sale of Gucci handbags and good china and while this is an overstatement (The New Yorker’s fiction has not been about it’s perceived readership for years) it’s true that the fiction has to be both a certain kind of good literature, and a certain flavor, and that flavor is tasteful. Asimov’s may not reflect a lot of its advertising, but then Asimov’s doesn’t HAVE a lot of advertising, and that is one of the issues with the magazine. (It’s format, the digest size on newsprint, is the subcompact car of magazine formats–cheap and without bells and whistles. But it also has problems on the newstand.)
Mostly I have managed to find a niche in which my fiction finds a place. It’s a precarious niche, partly because I’m the kind of writer who has a few fans who like my stuff a lot, rather than a large readership. I don’t like the idea of selling myself. I don’t like the idea of selling my fiction. I like that the magazines do all that for me. I don’t like product placement. I don’t like to think of my work co-opted the way music becomes co-opted when it’s used for an ad–because to me the ad changes the music, sometimes literally and sometimes only contextually. I find the publishing market precarious at best. While there is no reason for me to believe that the web will be more precarious than print, so far it has been. (SciFiction was created under the model that fiction gave cachet–was a kind of advertising, and it was killed when someone said one day, ‘hey this fiction stuff, I know we’ve talked about this before but I’ve got to ask again, do we think it’s really doing anything for us?’ I don’t see change helping me publish more and I can see ways in which in might make me publish less. In short, this kind of change is frightening to me. And I suspect to others.
But Brad, I think you’re right. The horse is already out of the barn.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Okay, that was way too long. Intersting post, Brad.
June 15th, 2007 at 11:16 am
I’m with you Brad. Commercial endorsement is everywhere in the good ol’ USA, there is no escaping it. Product placement in TV and movies, print media all owned by huge conglomerates. The internet used to be our last bastion of free speech, now look what’s happening.
Wow, the inner old hippie is strong today! I just told my summer school math class, 7th graders, that I remember Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. They were suitably impressed.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Well, as a work-for-hire hack, I know all about having to tailor your content to satisfy the needs of the guy paying the check.
But when I sit down to write what I want to write, I really don’t want to have to give a tinker’s damn about if Joe Douchebag Advertising Exec is going to “get it.” Which is probably why The Dude accuses me of being “willfully non-commerical.”
On the other hand, no one has ever said, “I just want to stay home tonight and curl up with a good ad copy.”
But as Bud used to say when he was writing resolutions for the state, “We’re not whores. We’re call girls.”
June 15th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
hmmmmm so if i ever see a Blackburn story saying that he is “using a gun that he picked up from the wonderfull people at Chucks guns, if it goes bang, its a Chuck gun. open 24hours” i will know you sold out. Thanks for not selling out.
I’m reminded of the old romance novels and pulp books from years ago. in them half way through was those cardboard pull out ads for cigerets. Thankfully they stopped. i didn’t want a ad in my reading material. A magazine is diffrent. but i still don’t want to see a advertisment in the middle of the page of a story in the magazine. Call me crazy, i don’t like pop ups…
oh and its not being rude if its your oppinion. thankfully the advertising world, and the world in general has not been able to take that away.