8 ms·
The time Terry Pratchett’s German publisher inserted a soup ad into his novel (2011)
- ggm 3y agoThe comments on the blog are wierd. "Yea, but because Rupert Murdoch ate my baby, this isn't as bad so it's OK so" It's not OK to fuck around with an authors words.
- pferde 3y agoThe way Mr. Pratchett describes the ad, it reminds me a lot of the ads one of his characters kept adding to their "moving pictures" in the book of the same name ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Pictures_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Pictures_(novel) ). Perhaps this incident is where he got the idea from?
- entuno 3y agoThis (older) article states that he only switched publishers from Moving Pictures onwards: https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and-the-maggi-soup-adverts/ https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and... > Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. So if anything I wonder if it's the other way round - the publisher reading Moving Pictures and thinking that it was a great idea? Or maybe Terry had seen this in older books and written it into the story, not expecting that it would happen to him? The Publisher could even argue that it's a rather meta joke they added into the book, which fits really well - but I don't think I'd want to have that argument.
- mkl 3y agoNo, from the same blog post: "Pratchett was not the only one with the soup adverts, I remember at least one Star Trek novel and a few non-franchise ones having the same stuff in it. The whole thing was a holdover from the 50s or 60s, when practices like that were more common, especially with publishers of cheap genre fiction."
- chrismorgan 3y agoBlogspam for https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and-the-maggi-soup-adverts/ https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and....
- anewhnaccount2 3y agoDoes anyone have any kind of explanation for the blacked out section?
- mhd 3y agoInteresting theories in the replies. But no, those blacked out sections are there in the original book, not added by the blog poster. Probably to stretch the few ad sentences over a whole page (or two).
- masklinn 3y agoProbably just a desire to 1. Outline the ad bits, and show that they are integrated in the middle of the text (aka it’s not a page of soup ad in the middle of the novel as you might assume). 2. Limit the risks of IP issues due to unauthorised reproduction even though this is just two pages out of a 350-odd pages novel (so almost certainly fair use).
- nielsole 3y agoThe author of the article lives in Germany where fair use is not a thing.
- yorwba 3y agoThere's a right to quote copyright-protected works https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__51.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__51.html ( EDIT: in English: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urhg.html#p0373 https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur... ) which often boils down to the same thing, even though it's not literally called "fair use".
- luckystarr 3y agoI remember this ad. I read a different book from the same publisher back in the days and was completely offended by having an ad in a book I just bought. The upside was that it could be removed without removing any text from the book.
- londons_explore 3y agoSo it was on a separate page that you could tear out? That's not so bad
- thfuran 3y agoIt's awful.
- _nalply 3y agoYeah. I remember such an ad in a German book I had. It was the only ad in that old book and this ad didn't age well: it was for a product not offered anymore. This ad was tailored to the story, something like this: "In a different vein, wouldn't be it nice if the hero could enjoy product X?" It was on two pages such that you could tear it out. The first page was almost empty with a small teaser and on the other page you had the ad text and a small logo. I found it very weird and it is awful because it tears you out of the story. You lose the flow.
- dhoe 3y agoAs someone who's read and loved a lot of pulp fiction from this publisher, it's never bothered me. It was clearly separate from the normal text and you knew it after a couple of times; if I remember correctly, they were done in a low key amusing way.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- LeonB 3y agoA thing contained an ad. (But anything related to Terry Pratchett probably gets my upvote.)
- Semaphor 3y agoWow, I’m German, but I never heard of anything like this. Though I now remember first/last page ads in sci-fi pulp novels from the 70s/80s, never thought much of that :D
- mhd 3y agoCigarette adds quite often…
- nikanj 3y agoMeanwhile this is such an everyday thing in film/tv. Product placements are 1) everywhere 2) really blatant.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blkhawk 3y agoOkay, this is actually something I remember from Fantasy and Scifi Books. I had totally forgotten that was a thing :D I think my German editions of the Skylark series by E.E.Smith have this.
- haunter 3y agoThis pisses me off in video games. Fantasy world and they insert a product placement. FFXV for example with the Nissin cup noodles https://static1.dualshockersimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Final-Fantasy-15-Cup-of-Noodles-truck-scaled.jpg https://static1.dualshockersimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/... Which is also strange because you would think SE values their flagship franchise more. Like not sure Nissin were paying _that much_ even.
- Danieru 3y agoWithin the creative industry in Japan Nissin's sponsorships are pretty common and well respected. For example steamboy, one of th most expensive anime productions, relied on it. So the placement in ff is if anything a mark of quality. Furthermore Nissin has a pretty strong brand in Japan. Their museum is a pretty popular local visit destination. Their souvenir cup noodles are a common sight at regular family homes. Japan sort of never lost the soap opera style product sponsorship. Thanks to the production committee style of funding anime the sponsorships serve as key early money. Aka, that specific product placement is itself an artistic expression.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoSure, it's a different world, but don't you think SOME things must be the same? ;D
- astrange 3y agoJapan is more than capitalist enough that their major brands are also valued parts of their culture. FFXV is already a modern Western[0] RPG where the main characters drive a luxury car and wear tech goth leather jackets. And SE's #4 flagship is a Disney advertisement. [0] as in cowboy, not as in CRPG
- kaycey2022 3y agoWhy? It’s so innocuous and a bit funny. It doesn’t compromise on any aspect of the gameplay. Sure, they could have spent a little more effort to make the image fit the final fantasy theme, but companies get weird about how their image is used. This nit pick comes off as entitled to me.
- wizofaus 3y agoThe main problem is surely that everything about modern life that Pratchett tangentially referred to was inevitably the victim of his mockery of how absurd it was - so were an ad for instant soup to appear halfway through the adventures of Rincewind, Sam Vines or (my personal favourite) Lord Vetinari, it would surely be interpreted by any half-clued-in reader as an object of ridicule...
- riidom 3y agoHere are some more pictures of it: https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/
- rsynnott 3y agoI wonder is product placement/native advertising a thing in literature at all. It's certainly a big deal in TV; that's why, despite no human who did not actually work for Microsoft ever having bought a Windows Phone 8 device, House of Cards was full of them, say.
- notahacker 3y agoCould be a great little earner for writers of "airport novels", especially since that style of thriller often uses brands of clothes worn, vehicles driven, locations visited, drinks consumed, and firearms fired to build a connection with the real world anyway.
- rsynnott 3y agoI'm suddenly very suspicious of modern-ish novels with named cigarette brands (most places ban nearly all advertisement of cigarettes these days, but I doubt anyone has gotten round to regulating cigarette product placement in books...)
- SilverBirch 3y agoWell this website sets a new low for the increasingly terrible experience of browsing the modern internet. Pop up at the top? Nope. Pop up from the bottom? Nope! Pop up from the right hand side covering half my entire browsing window with no option to close it. So what I gather from this article is >Did you know that German >paid product placement into >international writers? Yes, it’ >this Neil Gaiman thread). Great. Thanks for that.
- i_don_t_know 3y agoI have a copy of that edition and I remember being very confused and annoyed by the ad. It's also something I don't remember seeing in other books but I could be wrong. I switched to reading his novels in English (imports from the UK, expensive but worth it).
- rf15 3y agoHeyne is well known by now for their questionable translation work, at least in the genre fiction section. Covers get modified towards more blandness, language gets defanged, etc.. One of the more prominent examples in recent times is their translation of Gideon the Ninth and its sequels (international bestseller, Nebula and Hugo shortlisted, "easy money" when importing a work). It went so badly they apparently stopped publishing the series altogether past the second book.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ryzvonusef 3y agoI don't get it, why do this, when you would just insert a pamphlet of an ad between the pages of each book (as a bookmark) or put a single 4sheet of ad between the pages as it is bound? Both would be unacceptable to me, but at least it wouldn't be AS horrifying as literally editing the text and putting product placement in between the story lines. there is evil and then there is stupid.