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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What it does is turn storytelling into a delivery medium for selling people stuff. And that has all kinds of negative effects.