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?"
This is totally pointless. I mean, if you already paid for the book, why should there have to be ads? 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.
Because they are greedy. Why stop there? Why not insert the name of the restaurant into the text? Auto replace "restaurant" with "Chili's". Does the main character put on a coat? Why not make it an Armani coat? Does she take a sip of water? Spice up that water to your brand soft drink for a small fee! Why stop there? Let sponsors have characters "As Captain 'Pizza Hut' Ahab looked out over the sea, he saw her, Moby Dick, brought to you by Target."
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.
'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.
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'
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.
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.
Channel overlays are a crime. There's a reason more and more people go to sites like watchtvsitcoms.com and Piratebay. People are revolting and instead of figuring out the cause, the companies complain.
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.
This is totally pointless. I mean, if you already paid for the book, why should there have to be ads?
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
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.
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.
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.)
Ads increase profit for companies, they never decrease the price of products
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.
It's because whenever people come up with a viable alternative the industry kills it by demanding that legislators make it illegal. They're not always successful, but in most cases they are. Free markets are all well and good, as long as they're actually free. The problem is that in places like the US, we've got a free market when it's convenient to business and a heavily regulated market when it's inconvenient for the consumer.
The cost of TV would go down dramatically if people had the opportunity to ma
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.
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.
"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. 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
The reason why patents, such as this fine example, exist is simple. It's so fucking retarded that whenever you want to argue against it you don't even know where to begin. Mark my words, soon you'll read a/. article saying that breathing oxygen has been patented, and that you'll have to pay royalties in order to exercise it.
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.
It wouldn't at all surprise me if somebody or somebodies, including the big guys, try hard to kill this one before it leaves the application phase.
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.
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
Yah. Let them use patent law to stick ads in books, and then the pissed-off authors can use copyright law to stop them from creating unlicensed "derivative" works.
That and the GNU Public License makes me think, "man, I'm glad copyright law as we know it is good for something."
If you've ever met somebody involved with marketing or fund raising you'd realize that they see $ on everything. Trust me, they'd charge a person being given an award for the plaque if they could get away with it. The only thing that ever kills ideas like that is if people opt to have nothing than accept whatever it is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
... for filtering book (and book advertiser) content through human decision-making processes.
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!!
I've already started going through old software patents and adding "in the real world" to them. My one-click vending machine should allow me to buy an island.
"Patent" my ass. What I would like to send them is a bag of burning dog shit on their front porch for even suggesting such an idea! It seems that every day we really are coming closer and closer to the insane world of the movie Idiocracy; these bastards want to put fucking advertisements on bloody everything! Them, them, fuck them!
Not sure if this serves as prior art re e-books, but Chris Whittle was including ads in books in the late 1980s [nytimes.com], before Amazon was launched and e-books existed in a meaningful commercial form.
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!
How Pointless.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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'
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't we just start burning Amazon marketers?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
+11 Insightful
+11 Inspiring
+1,000,000 JUSTICE
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
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.)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost of TV would go down dramatically if people had the opportunity to ma
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Why are we still doing this? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hold your horses (Score:2)
Calm down, and let us enumerate its qualities in regard to novelty and usefulness.
Go ahead, you clowns first.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
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!
Parent
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.
Ads in books? (Score:4, Funny)
Reading books with ads in them? No thanks. I'll be off to the pirate ba... shit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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
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!!
This is a great idea! (Score:2)
Patent? (Score:2)
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.
>^_^\
There Were Ads in Books in the 80s (Score:3, Informative)
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!
Re: (Score:2)