Amazon Wants Patent For Inserting Ads Into Books 219
theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that 'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"
How Pointless.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, I mean when I paid for cable TV they took out the ads! Wait. Shit.
Re:How Pointless.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though if I wanted ads breaking up what I was reading, I'd buy a newspaper. But I don't so I'll never buy one of those books or a newspaper.
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I know a better solution:
'Share and Enjoy' is the company motto of the hugely successful Microsoft Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.
The motto stands-- or rather stood-- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives-- now deceased.
The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.
Re:How Pointless.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If that ever came to be I would wholeheartedly endorse book burning.
Good god, why not just stick ads in all the old works? I'm sure Picasso would have put a coke machine in Guernica if he knew how cool and refreshing it was....
'I painted this to protest the lack of coca-cola in my homeland. It will be returned to Spain when there is a coke machine on every corner'
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Can't we just start burning Amazon marketers?
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+11 Insightful
+11 Inspiring
+1,000,000 JUSTICE
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I don't get it. Where are the advertisements? You had a great idea, but you forgot to mix the ads in with your text--find great text with Bing! the greatest search engine made by the greatest software company in the world. <-- like this.
Re:How Pointless.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is no different than cable TV. I pay x dollars a month just to watch via cable. But then I still get advertisements thrown in. I get ads between "scenes", I get ads that are product placements, and then, imho the worst are those that the channel overlays some animation in the corner.
So changing "Bob goes into his local restaurant for a greasy cheeseburger" to "Bob goes into TGIFridays for their Super Texan Bacon Burger" is only one step. Most of the books I own have blank margins. Why not put a few ads in there? At the end of a chapter, if the chapter ends with a partial page, why not just put a 1/2 page ad there? I'd love to see, "STIHL Chainsaws present, Chapter 6 in Stephen King's new thriller..."
My phonebook has a section in the middle with coupons, why not inject a few pages of coupons into the next Harry Potter book? I'm sure all the teenagers reading it could benefit from the acne cream ads.
I always thought that most people today that read Stephen King's Christine had no idea what a 1958 Plymouth Fury looked like. So maybe they should update it to be a 2008 Toyota Prius. Now while the Prius doesn't evoke fear due to it's toothy chrome grille or tension with it's low rumbling demon-like engine. I'm sure someone would be scared of being sneaked up on by a hybrid.
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Is producing TV cheap? No, it's not. But instead of giving multi-million dollar contracts to stars, cancel them. Simon wants $1.4 million per show? Bye-bye. Friends want $750,000 per ep each? It was a nice run, have fun in your next ventures.
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People are revolting
The media executives agree whole-heartedly, and are sticking it to those revolting scum with revolting ads.
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What a delightfully evil idea! And by the way, it's quite possibly patentable itself. And it would be a totally legitimate derivative work of public domain works. Couple it with some Google Adword algorithms, include hyperlinks to relevant products, and you've got a winning idea! (By the way, for $2,500, I could get you a provisional patent application on the idea---no joke).
You could even work the algorithm to add or mutate whole sentences. Just think: "Elizabeth Bennett quickly spritzed some Chanel
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I keep seeing this faulty argument involving the concept of "paying twice". It's not that you're being asked to pay again, it's that you didn't fully "pay" the first time. It'd be like buying a $10 product and paying $5 up-front, and having the other $5 paid by advertising it shows.
That aside, isn't this patent a good thing? It means that only Amazon's products will be crippled with advertising inserted in
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Re:How Pointless.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of books do not include such advertisements, but the publishers do still turn a profit. It's not like with magazines, where the costs of a print run are typically higher than revenue from subscription fees. With books, you're usually paying for the costs of printing the book and an extra amount on top. Thus, the idea that you aren't paying for the book in full is simply false. The ads are just extra profit for the publisher.
It's greed coupled with a total disregard for the artistic integrity of a work.
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There's advertising in most of my books - but it's in the back and is publisher advertising, not third party.
Heck, they seem to like including first chapter of the next book, or some other excerpt, right now.
In the middle would be a tad more annoying.
Re:How Pointless.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it doesn't work like that with ads. You can watch public television for free and get ads, or you can pay money to watch cable television and get ads. You can pay $50 for Battlefield 1942, or you can pay $50 for Battlefield 2142 and get ads.
Ads increase profit for companies, they never decrease the price of products, except those offered for free (like Google.)
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That's because people still buy the ad-infested products. Vote with your wallet. I personally pass over anything with ads, like TV, magazines, newspapers, or DVDs with unskippable ads. There are plenty of things not ad-infested.
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The cost of TV would go down dramatically if people had the opportunity to ma
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Legal choices. If you remove that condition, you can get all the TV you want with no regional limitations of any kind, and with no advertisements of any kind. I have seen a few shows that even have those annoying overlays removed and replaced with less obtrusive blurring. Those choices are quite numerous as well. I would not touch PirateBay with a 10ft pole. Probably completely infected with god knows what. There are plenty of smaller membership
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All DVDs have skippable ads.
Just use DVD Decrypter and remove all the PUOs (Prohibited User Operations). Eliminate all the previews, ads, FBI warning, and the other crap along with it.
There are a ton of media devices available, and soon to be available, that you can directly load the DVD image file off a networked drive and view it. HDMI even.
I do this for every single DVD I get. In fact, if for some reason I can't add it to my digital library, I RETURN IT. It's not worth it.
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I'm willing to bet that your DVD decrypter takes longer than just sitting through the ads one time. I'd rather just get a player that ignores those flags.
Anyways, the point would be that we have to discourage this sort of stuff, or they'll just keep getting more and more intrusive.
DVD decrypter, editing the film works for current, separate ads, but it doesn't work for product placement where the ads are actually incorporated into the actual show. Everybody drinking various coke brands with no sign of peps
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You can watch public television for free and get ads, or you can pay money to watch even more channels than you can get OVA and get ads except on the premium channels where you really are paying for the content and not just the delivery of it.
FTFY.
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Nope. They are not for free. Who do you think pays the money that Google wants for those ads? You, when you buy the product.
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That aside, isn't this patent a good thing? It means that only Amazon's products will be crippled with advertising inserted in this manner.
Patents get licensed. In terms of your description, $10 product would get sold for $6 by other publishers - $5 "up front" and $1 to cover the patent royalty.
Amazon has an interesting self-publishing business (forget what it is called and I'm certainly not going to advertise for them), but I can imagine them offering trade-quality books which aren't otherwise available (out of copyright, let alone print) at a discount if they can use 1 page in 20 for adverts.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel" might be $10 if printed without ads, but less if the buyer chooses that option. Amazon could advertise it's own related goods (perhaps a Hornblower video, to suggest something not directly related but close enough) and provide a discount voucher (with unique code) either per book printed or per advert.
Of course, some time soon, printing on demand will become efficient for individual books. If Amazon wants a slice of advertising in any of them, then a patent "works" - but as far as I can see it is a business method.
In short: if they want to put ads in books printed to demand to cut end-user costs, fine. If every left=even page had an ad and books were free, I'd love it. But patent? Printed media have sufficient prior art for advertising, tyvm.
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We will get to pay a third slice, when amazon licenses its patent to other parties and they increase their costs correspondingly!
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Well the ads will cut the cost for you the consumer, at least that is what they will tell you.
And besides they'll make sure there are no real alternatives to getting the book.
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Heck with digital distribution why even have ads on free stuff because the price of the device itself more than makes up for the minuscule price of transfer.
The Kindle has sold about 800,000 units. Analyst: Kindle to reach 10 percent of Amazon's customer base [zdnet.com] [June 30]
The vast majority of Kindle downloads are indeed priced at $9.99 or less (and a third of them are freebies)
Amazon is subsidizing the cost of those $9.99 books, which means they're just barely profitable.
Bernstein analysts Claudio estimate th
This was their plan all along (Score:2, Funny)
If it's actually tasteful, I wouldn't mind so much (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't mind a tasteful, text-only add in its own table that doesn't interrupt the flow of the text I'm reading. I would mind full-image or full-page ads.
I suggest doing it the way authors like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams used footnotes. Put an asterisk, add a footnote advertisement, and make it funny and in context with the text. Then I might actually buy whatever crap they're hawking.
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I would. Books are the last advertisement-free stronghold, the last place we can turn for entertainment that does not come loaded with advertisements. There is no possible way to place a tasteful ad in a book, and the concept should be immediately dropped. Honestly, how greedy can these publishers get?
I will not buy a single book from any publisher that engages in this practice (unle
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Such placements can really date the show if the company concerned has changed their branding radically or ceased to exist.
Why are we still doing this? (Score:2)
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Monsanto "pollution free" Oxy-Gen just might be. Their corn is.
Yeah. Do you know much about Monsanto, at all? I assume you do, given the way you have worded that comment.
A person I greatly respect once described them this way: "evil has a name."
Let them patent it (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. It means that anyone else with this idiotic idea will have to pay a royalty fee, which should discourage them. Unless you want to fight a prior art campaign against Amazon, claiming magazines with ads are prior art. Either way the money will discourage people from trying and this idea will die a lonely death.
Except for Amazon of course, since they hold the patent. But they can try it, and then they can see for themselves just how great this idea is when they launch it. It'll tank, hard. Nobody will want this.
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A huge percentage of web pages these days are dynamically generated, on demand, and includes ads. This patent could, plausibly, be seen to cover that. First, that provides a giant helping of prior art. Second, it means that there are loads of big serious companies who Amazon could theoretically go after if they got this patent.
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Seriously. It means that anyone else with this idiotic idea will have to pay a royalty fee, which should discourage them. Unless you want to fight a prior art campaign against Amazon, claiming magazines with ads are prior art. Either way the money will discourage people from trying and this idea will die a lonely death.
Except for Amazon of course, since they hold the patent. But they can try it, and then they can see for themselves just how great this idea is when they launch it. It'll tank, hard. Nobody will want this.
That's the thing I don't understand, about all of these ideas. None of them come from overwhelming customer demand.
Am I to believe that no one EVER gives them any suggestions, feature requests, etc.? Should I believe also that they never conduct any sort of market analysis, or hold focus groups, or otherwise try to find out what people already want so that they can come up with ways to meet that need?
This is about control just like far too many things I hear about that come from either corporations
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There's two kinds of marketing: To people who want your product and can benefit from it, and people who don't and don't need it. The former kind is a legitimate career; there is a product, and people who want it, and you are merely connecting them. Examples include concert posters and ads with lots of specifications and a product picture with no boobies, e.g. for water pumps. The latter is a terrible scourge upon this planet, for example the ads for Pull-Ups training pants that STILL pop into my head for no
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That and the GNU Public License makes me think, "man, I'm glad copyright law as we know it is good for something."
Keywords: "as we know it."
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Hold your horses (Score:2)
Calm down, and let us enumerate its qualities in regard to novelty and usefulness.
Go ahead, you clowns first.
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Well, web page advertising reads on the first several claims. Viewing a printed newspaper on an electronic device might read on certain other ones.
I don't know whether anybody's done this on an e-book yet, though.
Sick of ads (Score:2, Insightful)
I am so sick of ads. Just yesterday I swore off using youtube, what with all their ads overlaid on top of videos now.
I also recently compared the same exact video on hulu (which has ads) to itunes. The video from itunes was much, much better (sharper, better framerate) and no ads. Hulu video was complete crap - now way I could stand watching that. I'll gladly pay a reasonable price for a superior product.
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Adblock blocks those ads too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?p=D981B222DD3B7FED&feature=SeriesPlayList&v=Dt0pTCXjLwE [youtube.com]
This is just an example, but an Ad plays before in Opera. Not on my Firefox with Adblock.
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Very telling ... (Score:2, Insightful)
So to them a book is nothing more than a marketing instrument.
Re:Very telling ... (Score:4, Funny)
So to them a book is nothing more than a money making instrument.
I sort-of fixed it for you... but I don't really feel good about it... Read all about why I don't feel good about it in my next post for only $14.99!
Google itself can't find relevant ads for classics (Score:5, Interesting)
I wondered what sorts of ads Google would put in Tom Sawyer. Cave tours? Paint companies? Anatomy textbooks? But I see that Google itself offers no paid links when I search on "Tom Sawyer."
I wondered what sorts of ads Google would put in "The Pit and the Pendulum." Rat poison? Grandfather clocks? Surcingles... whatever a surcingle is? But I see that Google itself offers no paid links when I search on "The Pit and the Pendulum."
"To Kill a Mockingbird?" No paid links. "Gargantua and Pantagruel?" No paid links. "Lolita?" No paid links.
Inserting relevant advertising into books may be sooner said than done.
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I just pulled an paperback from 2003 off of my shelf, it has the following ads in the back:
Mercedes Lackey (19 distinct books)
Eric Flint (15 distinct books)
Classic Masters of Science Fiction Back in print! (15 distinct books)
A page for 1632 and 1633
Mary Brown (5 distinct books)
Amazons 'r Us (The Chicks Series, 5 distinct books)
Harry Turtledove (7 distinct books)
Doranna Durgin's Fantasy (6 distinct books)
Andre Norton (5 distinct books)
Baen's Bar!
So, at least for fiction it seems to be normal to have ads fo
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I wondered what sorts of ads Google would put in "The Pit and the Pendulum."
Zoloft.
Paid links are bid on by search term, I believe (Score:2)
It's not all that surprising that no one's interested in buying space on the search terms you listed (Amazon won't allow affiliates to do that, fyi). If you put the text of those books on a page with an adsense box, I'm sure Google would find something to put there.
Ads in books? (Score:4, Funny)
Reading books with ads in them? No thanks. I'll be off to the pirate ba... shit.
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Reading books with ads in them? No thanks. I'll be off to the pirate ba... shit.
Hey look, the story is about advertisements in books. And wow, look at that! - this comment is also about advertising in books! ... and for some reason, it was modded Offtopic.
That's a good example of shitty moderation. As in, this is what not to do.
As for me, do your worst. I have karma to burn. Any points you waste on me for saying what you know to be the fuckin' truth are points you won't waste improperly modding someone else. So, make my day.
Self healing system (Score:2)
The problem fixed itself:
50% Funny
30% Interesting
20% Offtopic
Hmm... (Score:2)
Old Idea (Score:2)
I think I saw something like this about 25 years ago in some German trashy SF. The story had seomthing about food and then the next page there was an ad for "Heisse Tasse" by Maggi or such a thing.
Old idea with new twist (Score:2)
Yes, but the new Idea is that if you download the book as eBook you get an up-to-date advert with the current flavor of "Heisse Tasse".
But then German SF won't be sold for Kindle anyway. After the way Amazon has treated Mobipocket the scene has created such a resentment towards DRM that the world largest SF series will be sold as DRM free ePUB pretty soon.
Attn: Amazon - BOOKS DO NOT HAVE ADS! (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont really ever remember seeing and advertisement in ANY BOOK I have ever purchased. I'm sorry Amazon. Blow it out your ass. I'll stick to paper backs rather than your greed infected E-book.
Print books had ads (Score:3, Interesting)
There were (are?) real books with ads.
Maybe it was only done by a handful of (German?) publishers, but I remember going through my parents bookshelves and flipping through some paper back whodunits and some had one or two pages with ads, sometimes in context to the story. i.e. making a reference to the story.
A little bit like with old time radio shows: "While $detective leans back with a $cigarette, waiting for the guy to leave the house again, why not get yourself a $cigarette with their unique flavor and
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There have certainly been some interesting replies. I really havent seen any advertisements in a book. I have seen the occasional ad at the back of the book for another book from the publisher related to the material but I have not seen ads sprinkled throughout a book ever... and i hope i never do.
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Where does it say anywhere that they will be doing this for paid books?
Perhaps this is a way for them to get into the advertising business, while providing books for free, similar to the way Google delivers Maps, etc.
If it's an option to bring rare and out-of-print books to the masses, then why shoot it down?
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I dont really ever remember seeing and advertisement in ANY BOOK I have ever purchased.
Most of the books I've purchased recently have anywhere from 3-10 pages of ads at the back. One of them had a really annoying ad on a thick sheet of card inserted in the middle of the book (Making Money, Terry Pratchett, Corgi Books paperback edition; the ad was for Pratchett's next book and gave details of how to preorder it via Tesco's web site... I don't know whether or not only copies sold by Tesco had this insertion
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I got a collection of old scifi from an uncle that had cigarette ads. He still smoked the same brand:)
I think I had one with a car ad, too, on cardstock. An american car, but I don't remember which.
I claim my own patent... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh Yeah? (Score:3, Insightful)
I claim MY patent for "a method of monopolizing obvious ideas for which there is lots of prior art by means of convincing the Patent Office that the same old idea, when done with a computer, is somehow radically different and worthy of being treated like a new and innovative invention."
The way I see it, I should make billions. BILLIONS!!
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Can I just patent "The use of a government system that was a good idea in planning until it got misconstrued by greed."
No, they can't let you personally own most of the world ...
This is a great idea! (Score:2)
Patent? (Score:2)
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You could get sex with a bucket of chicken, family style in that movie. That's not insane, that's bloody brilliant.
That's one more reason (Score:2)
No limits, tags, or licenses needed.
I guess for safety's sake, we'd have to use nerf guns, or maybe supersoakers loaded with red ink.
The more adventurous could shoot them with cameras and post the photos on a Webpage of Shame with hints on where to find them for further nerf action.
>^_^\
What they really want (Score:2)
Is a kick in the teeth. Good way to lose business.
Good thing the specify "on demand" (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember ripping ads out of the center of paperbacks thirty years ago. Without "on demand" they'd have that pesky prior art thing to deal with.
What's the difference (Score:2)
There Were Ads in Books in the 80s (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, a patent I can get behind. (Score:2)
Sure, it's a stupid patent. Sure, it merely applies existing general techniques to a specific domain they were already applicable to. But as far as I'm concerned, Amazon can have this patent and have it forever. Then I'll know if I get e-books from a competitor, there won't be any stinking ads in them.
Someone should explain to Bezos... (Score:2)
... that MAGAZINES are not sufficiently unique from books in this context, and there are MOUNTAINS of prior art for inserting advertising into them.
Readers Digest (Score:2)
Next up (Score:2)
They will patent 'inserting ads into newspapers' and magazines.
There goes my day job.
Wonderful! (Score:2)
One more reason not to jump onto the e-book hype! ;-) (Not that I hadn't had enough reasons already.)
Better idea (Score:3, Interesting)
How about putting ads inside ads? Take a look at an ad, any ad. Open a magazine and look at an ad. Look at all that space in there. Plenty of room to jam another ad right in the middle. TV? Sure, lots of space to cram another ad inside an ad. Use picture in picture. Heck, you could cover the first ad entirely with other ads using picture in picture and depending on the size of each extra ad I bet that you would more than double your money! Radio? Heck yeah. Lot's of space. Just cram the words for another ad into the spaces between the words of the first ad. The possibilities are endless!
Ads inside ads. I'm running to the patent office right now!
prior art (Score:2)
The german Heyne Verlag used to insert adds with a similar technique into early BattleTech books. There was only one such add in them but it was so obtrusive that I swore never to buy the advertised product - an instant soup of some kind.
Good that Kindle is not available in Europe (Score:2)
One more reason to be glad that Kindle is still not sold in Europe. Amazons eBook strategy is just disgraceful in all aspects and every day the Kindle start in Europe is delayed is a good day for eBooks and it gives the competition here another day head start.
I just hope that by the time Amazon's Kindle makes it out of the US they have lost so much ground that they never be able to catch up.
I think this is great! (Score:2)
The earlier we have a way to let some idiot sue everyone on the planet for putting ads in their books, the better.
Now all we have to do, is not buy amazon ebooks, and anonymously inform amazon, that their sales go down because of other companies selling cheaper books with ads in them.
I'm all for it (Score:2)
If Amazon monopolizes placing ads in books, I'm all for it. A lot of their other patents are on equally annoying behaviors, so they are good because they keep other companies from doing these stupid things.
Correlary... (Score:2)
Am I missing something? (Score:2)
Romeo & Juliet - now with ads (Score:2)
Oh, how my heart yearns to see this happen.
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Really though, the man was a fuckin' genius.
And I always thought... (Score:2)
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Or, because the advert passes into your brain at only a subconscious level, it's more powerful than it ever has been before.
Nah. I know it's radical and not terribly popular these days, but it's called "being your own person." There's this thing that goes along with that, known as "making your own decisions."
Does that sound like a bunch of sarcasm? I'm sure it does. It's still the truth. Maybe someone else would have put that in a more palatable way for you, but I was handy, so there you go. Most of advertising is so effective because people are willing to consult anything except for their own reasoning when it comes to
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the mark of a person who has any sort of personal advancement whatsoever is that these "subconscious" cues increasingly become conscious decisions.
(Most) advertising these days, perhaps as always, preys on the flaws we have found through exploration of our biology and psyche. You can consider advertising as the front-line of the consciousness wars, because they deliberately try to circumvent both inherent mechanisms one has toward discrimination as well as any added scripts one have patched into place to try and jump out of their box. Witness the rise in ads that target "enlightenment" in some sense, while selling a car, or moisturizer.
I'll put that another way. If Yogis can go to extreme, sub-zero mountainous regions wearing minimal clothing, and consciously control their body heat output to the point that they can fully dry soaking wet, freezing-cold cloths multiple times a night (because their alternative is freezing to death), then you can be your own person and become aware of subconscious influences and reject them.
Manipulative
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Just remember "To see it partially or to fail to see it clearly is to be influenced by it", and if you believe that you can see everything clearly 100% of the time, you're really just fooling yourself.
So ah, who told you that? A marketer? I say this with no intention of causing offense: I think your confusion on this is great, and so if you will please have some patience with me, I will explain the same thing a few different ways and hope that one of them is readily accessible to you.
You don't need to see everything clearly. You just need to see yourself clearly (that's only one thing; let "everything" take care of itself). When you can do that, then instead of feeling that something affected you
gargantuan in the US and paper books ... (Score:2)
.. but Amazon has not yet started to sell eBooks in Europe. Actually Amazon has Mobipocket to sell world wide - but - Amazon started to kill off Mobipocket even before starting to sell Kindle world wide. Which will leave them without an world wide eBook strategy quite soon.