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Do authors get paid for ad placement in novels?

34 points by Ajay-p ↗ HN
I was reading the latest John Sandford novel and the number of times "YouTube" has been referenced by a character is becoming ridiculous. I've had this thought before when brands suddenly pop up in novels, but how could one prove it?

Has anyone else noticed this?

54 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] thread
arbitrage
I find it particularly scene breaking as well. Stephen King does this a great deal -- he seems inordinately fond of name-dropping electronics.

I don't think authors get paid to include name brands as adverts. I think what you and I are seeing is men of a certain age thinking things are "cool" and then using the name of a product or service to themselves appear "cool" or in-touch.

I personally always feel it has the exact opposite effect for the reason you already said: authors who do this do it so often that it becomes extremely noticeable and scene-breaking.

FFP999
They call this "KMart Realism" sometimes, KMart being a chain of discount stores that was prominent way back when, comparable to Walmart. The idea is to enhance versimilitude by dropping in signifiers from contemporary consumer culture.

King, as you note, does this a lot and his name often comes up when people are talking about it: he was in fact one of the first well known authors to use this device regularly. I agree that he's definitely overdoing it these days.

harperlee
An elegant world-building technique that King uses is to invent a brand and use it across novels; but an existing brand will always communicate much more effectively, as you already know the brand and its positioning! It’s a lazy way of implementing “show, don’t tell”. Instead of “she was expensively dressed”, “she wore Prada”, etc.

Also comes to mind a meta-use of this in American Psycho (not from King!), were the psychopathic narrator only uses external appearance and brands to describe people.

transcriptase
Why is the other reply to this comment dead?
c22
It looks like the comment's author may be shadowbanned but has had many of their posts vouched for. Could be a good candidate for review.
mattkrause
Be the change you want to see and vouch for it! (I did)

Almost all of FFP999’s comments are dead but all the ones I skimmed seemed constructive.

jetrink
When authors go out of their way to avoid using a brand name, it can be equally distracting though. I'd prefer that a character simply visit YouTube rather than visiting 'an online video site' or some fictional site with a made-up name like Chumhum. I think a distaste for product placement has sensitized us to seeing brand names in fiction, but some brands are a part of our daily lives in a way that is difficult to avoid.
dale_glass
That's mostly when people use bad brand names, mostly in foreign media. I say foreign because I imagine that it's a case for say, a Japanese author trying to imitate an English brand name without knowing enough English to make it sound even slightly sensible. That's how you get stuff like WcDonalds and "Bobson Dugnutt".

Done well though it works perfectly fine. It's not like everything is huge brands out there, so there's plenty room for random branding.

And once in a while somebody comes up with something neat. I think "Pesterchum" is a great name for a messenger app.

kweingar
When you use alternative brand names, you are cementing your story as taking place in an alternate universe of sorts. That works for some readers and for some stories, but for others it can be even more distracting than regular brand references.

To use your example, if I am reading a book set in mid-2010s Seattle and a character is wandering down Pike Street after a bad date, it would be jarring to see them using an app called “Pesterchum”

dale_glass
There's plenty odd brands for everything in the real world too. There's Ubuntu Cola, Migo phones, and AbiWord, to name a few examples.
aardvark179
But having a character in novel use such a brand has to be a conscious choice and say something about that character. Why are they drinking an odd brand of cola, or using an unusual sort of phone?
dale_glass
Why? Tying brands to identity is a weird thing. Companies aren't static anyway. I switch brands depending on how the wind blows at the time of purchase.
waveBidder
yes but that itself tells something about who you are, and precludes stories about certain kinds of people. not that I really want to read about them
_Algernon_
It also is a great way to ensure your writing is guaranteed to never be timeless.
kweingar
Writing doesn’t have to be timeless! Almost all books, even successful ones, are forgotten quickly. Writing isn’t a competition to see who can write the most immortal book.

I personally don’t care for books that conspicuously take place in the present day and feature fairly regular people. I’m reading to have some time away from screens—I don’t want to read about people staring at screens! But I know lots of people who find books like these more relatable and interesting.

waveBidder
"timelessness" is overrated. War and Peace has a particular time, Slaughterhouse 5, pretty much anything that's on a great books list is there because its the product of a particular time and place.
wjnc
A cousin of mine is in film production (think EU teen movies) and one of his movies had a full two minutes product placement segment. I made fun of this (not the kindest move in retrospect) and he explained that this segment pretty much cemented the feasibility of the whole movie. It was a known in advance fixed fee source of income. I have no clue about writers and books but perhaps the publishers (they give advances to well-known authors?) repackage some of the risk via endorsements? That would be finance where you wouldn’t expect it.
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assimpleaspossi
Sandford was also a big Subway sandwich eater and that gets mentioned a number of times, along with Lucas Davenport's affinity for Diet Coke.
moltar
If this was a thing, there must be middlemen who organize these deals. Have you checked?

I doubt a large company like google would approach individual authors. Generally these kind of things are done thru brokers or marketplaces of sorts.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS
It could be done by the publisher themselves, no? They're in a prime position to play middleman.
Ajay-p
I thought of it like it was a concert. A band might have sponsors and advertising in the concert venue. It makes sense in a business mindset that an author might be convinced to put product names, etc. in their popular novels for a large fee.

I can't help but feel .. tricked in a way, but .. I am maybe too sensitive to the advertising in general. I hope advertising does not invade my books, too..

htk
There's also the possibility that the author is trying to sound natural, as we do mention products/brands regularly in everyday conversations.
dalbasal
Yes... Books, & TV shows are often brandless. We're used to that. It's how story land looks, but our world is full of brands.

How many brand names do we say per day?

dylan604
From someone that occasionally visits YouTube, hearing people talk about YouTube this and YouTube that numerous times in one conversation let alone in a day is very noticeable. Same thing goes for Reddit. Or TikTok. Or any $socialMediaPlatform.

If you're someone that visits and talks about any of those sites, it probably doesn't seem out of place to you. You probably don't even realize you're doing it. It's just something that is a natural thing to be discussed since that's where you spend your time.

TrueGeek
And the author going the other way can sound very odd. In the Brady Bunch there is a scene where one of the kids asks a friend “hey, are you going to the rock concert this weekend?” The friend replies “yes, I can’t wait to see the rock concert, I’m so excited”. They sound like absolute robots.
waveBidder
only place I've seen that work is podcasts which don't have sponsorships leaning into it and turning it into a quasi-ad for " fizzy beverage".
ilyt
They can just invent brand or band name instead.
matheusmoreira
People generally don't mention products at all unless they're specifically talking about the products. The only excepion is generic trademarks: product names which have become so common they entered the vernacular language. In my country, WhatsApp is synonymous with phone number. People don't ask what my number is, they ask for my WhatsApp. Eventually they got sick of it and shortened it to "zap".
Ajay-p
What piqued my curiosity was that multiple and diverse characters were learning something on YouTube. A video how to use a Glock hand gun for one character, and their nemesis whom they want to kill, ALSO happened to watch a YouTube video on handling a gun. Everyone is learning so much with YouTube!

It felt strange. I recall the discussion about the aggressive advertising on YT so.. maybe I was primed to think this in reading.

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mattigames
I dread to have to read in the near future things like "so I opened X on my phone only to discover [.,.]"
_Algernon_
These days it's more like "so I opened X, formerly known as Twitter, on my phone only to discover [.,.]"
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pvaldes
That years when we were opening an X window all the time only to discover that the X org logo has been slurped by twitter...
Gimpei
Ever read “American Psycho”? Every other word is a designer brand, but I have a feeling, in that case at least, Bret Easton Ellis was not paid :)
queuebert
And in that instance was used to demonstrate the excessive shallowness and materialism of the characters.
TrueGeek
Man, that YouTube logo... The subtle coloring. The tasteful thickness
matheusmoreira
I hope they're getting paid. Product placement in shows is annoying enough. Writing brands into one's books is even worse. Doing all that for free is just insane. I seriously hope they aren't doing that.
cj
Which is better?

1. “After bringing my date to see the Barbie movie, we picked up a pair of blue Ray Bans at Sunglass Hut and a new top from the Gucci pop up across the plaza. Kim Kardashian was debuting a new product line.”

2. “After bringing my date to see the year’s blockbuster film, we picked up a blue pair of designer sun glasses at a mall sunglasses kiosk and a new top from a brand name designer pop up across the plaza. A TV celebrity was debuting a new product line.”

#2 would age better since it’s more generic. But I like #1 since the time and place of the scene is more deeply encoded in the story.

waveBidder
Not sure I'd want to read about the character either way, sounds like a tool. Maybe in 150 years when this would maybe give insight to the culture of the time.
kaashif
#1 reads like a like a line from American Psycho, every line is packed with brand names. Or maybe that's just because I'm reading it right now.

I don't think I mention brand names that often in conversation or in thought, the natural place is somewhere in the middle.

matheusmoreira
Those are not the only options available to writers. There's any number of things they could do.

The most obvious solution is to not describe these products at all. Frankly, they're irrelevant. There's no actual need to describe this extraneous stuff. Conserve detail. Attention is better spent in other areas such as the actual date and the feelings being experienced.

3. “After bringing my date to see a film she really wanted to watch, we picked up a pair of sun glasses at the mall and a new top across the plaza. It was really fun shopping with her. Some celebrity was debuting a new product line and she got really excited about it but all I could think about was how cute she looked.”

If you must describe products, invent fictitious brands. Just make them up on the spot. Better than advertising for free.

sprobertson
I skimmed the first 2 chapters and didn't see "YouTube" but it does seem like his style to mention a bunch of brands. He went as far as calling a key a "Yale key". The last page of chapter two says "Ralph Lauren" 3 times.
saaaaaam
I would talk about a yale key to mean a small flat saw youth type key, as opposed to a mortise lock key which has a cylindrical stem.
xhkkffbf
While YouTube is now commonplace enough that I could see an author use it naturally without compensation, I'm sure that payment happens. How often? Most books don't sell enough copies to make it worth their while.

I do know some local mystery novels who sell off the right to name a character at some of the local charity auctions for schools or other organizations. It's kind of cute.

beej71
Aside: this paperback book I enjoyed as a kid had a full page ad for Newports (cigarettes) in the middle of it.
swatcoder
In realist or pseudo-realist genres, brand is a symbol of time and place and class.

Many authors choose to dance around it or invent fictional brands because doing so can make a work timeless, but many authors and audiences are specifically interested in fixing a work into a place or time. Others just don’t see a reason to bother with all the dancing around.

There’s almost no market/value established for advertising brands in a novel in general, and there’s vanishingly small value in doing so for a ubiquitous brand like YouTube. In your example, it’s definitely not sponsored. It’s just a stylistic choice.

cududa
I’m not sure YouTube’s target audience is “people who read books”
gadders
Try Jack Carr books. Black Rifle Coffee and all the other bro-vet companies are on every page.

Not sure if he is doing it for money, because he is friends with the company, or because they are what the character would use. Possibly a combination.

Ajay-p
That I can understand! If you like a brand or product, as an author, you might want to spread the word! Maybe Mr. Sandford has an appreciation for YouTube.