Dystopia Status Level: ADS IN BOOKS 😡
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@susankayequinn I don't disagree with the sentiment, but what is the Amazon connection here? Are you saying Amazon inserted this text without the Author's permission? That the same book bought elsewhere doesn't include it?
@nicklockwood Amazon has already put chatbots inside their ebooks, and the threat to put ads in ebooks is longstanding (by Amazon, it's not Kobo out here saying "hey, you know what, what if we put ads in literally every square inch of everything"). I don't know the provenance of this example — for all I know it's the author lazily using AI; or it's spoof — but I know this is where everything is headed and getting of Amazon is the right approach, and start now.
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Dystopia Status Level: ADS IN BOOKS
My dear readers, you can leave Amazon, I promise. Even reducing Amazon usage helps, but *especially* for books. There are alternatives.
Here's how to find them:
https://susankayequinn.com/how-to-buy-sues-books-a-guide-to-retailers@susankayequinn Literally just yesterday I learned about Terry Pratchett's German publisher inserting soup ads into The Light Fantastic back in the 90s and I thought "oh that's so gross, surely nobody will ever do that again"
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of…
Stuffed Crocodile (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
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@susankayequinn Literally just yesterday I learned about Terry Pratchett's German publisher inserting soup ads into The Light Fantastic back in the 90s and I thought "oh that's so gross, surely nobody will ever do that again"
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of…
Stuffed Crocodile (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
@joshsutphin OH MY GOD
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@joshsutphin OH MY GOD
@susankayequinn @joshsutphin don’t know, if I break some illusion here, but for a long long time, there has been product placements in literature. Way before computer era. Probably as long as there has been entertainment books on market. (Sadly only found ai generated shit when trying to get actual link to prove this
)Of course, that one is pretty obvious and sloppy, unlike those Stephen Kings Bud lights, Camels, etc in his books (just one known author to mention). Every time you read an actual product name (specially, if the hero is using it), it is pretty probably paid mention.
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R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
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@farbel first, you don't know that; second, they're *already* putting chatbots in the ebooks; third, Amazon has a long long LONG history of just rolling out stuff in small batch trials to see how it floats; fourth, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was AI accidentally left in the ebook by a shitty AI enthusiast author; fifth, people have OPENLY talked about ads in ebooks FOREVER; sixth, if this is none of the above, wait a minute, that will change.
@susankayequinn First, I read a LOT of books on my aging kindle and have NEVER seen an ad. Second, nor have I ever seen a chatbot. Third, I don't know one single other person who has seen an ad or chatbot in an Amazon ebook. Your fourth point, I might believe, but that is not indicative of anything Amazon is doing other than allowing people to publish AI drek. Fifth, talk is talk. Sixth, everything changes, but that doesn't make your reposted meme true.
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@susankayequinn Literally just yesterday I learned about Terry Pratchett's German publisher inserting soup ads into The Light Fantastic back in the 90s and I thought "oh that's so gross, surely nobody will ever do that again"
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of…
Stuffed Crocodile (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
@joshsutphin @susankayequinn that was also my first thought since I owned a book with such an ad and I remember being really confused and weirded out by it back then…
(Not sure if it was Terry Pratchett or some other book by the same publisher) -
@susankayequinn @joshsutphin don’t know, if I break some illusion here, but for a long long time, there has been product placements in literature. Way before computer era. Probably as long as there has been entertainment books on market. (Sadly only found ai generated shit when trying to get actual link to prove this
)Of course, that one is pretty obvious and sloppy, unlike those Stephen Kings Bud lights, Camels, etc in his books (just one known author to mention). Every time you read an actual product name (specially, if the hero is using it), it is pretty probably paid mention.
Somehow I think product placements are different than ads because it's entirely possible the author intentionally put the product name there. I mean, I know *many* aspiring authors who loved to laden their prose with product names, and no one was paying them to do it.
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@susankayequinn First, I read a LOT of books on my aging kindle and have NEVER seen an ad. Second, nor have I ever seen a chatbot. Third, I don't know one single other person who has seen an ad or chatbot in an Amazon ebook. Your fourth point, I might believe, but that is not indicative of anything Amazon is doing other than allowing people to publish AI drek. Fifth, talk is talk. Sixth, everything changes, but that doesn't make your reposted meme true.
@farbel it's in the kindle app now
Amazon adds AI chatbot to the Kindle app which offers "spoiler-free" answers about your ebooks
Amazon has added a generative AI chatbot to the Kindle app that is supposed to provide information about the book you’re reading.
Tom's Guide (www.tomsguide.com)
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@susankayequinn First, I read a LOT of books on my aging kindle and have NEVER seen an ad. Second, nor have I ever seen a chatbot. Third, I don't know one single other person who has seen an ad or chatbot in an Amazon ebook. Your fourth point, I might believe, but that is not indicative of anything Amazon is doing other than allowing people to publish AI drek. Fifth, talk is talk. Sixth, everything changes, but that doesn't make your reposted meme true.
@farbel Amazon isn't just "allowing people to publish AI drek" it pushes me to use their AI translators and AI narrators every time I log into the author portal. It's been using AI to summarize and then bury reviews written by humans. It's PUSHING AI SLOP everywhere. It is literally shoving its chatbots into everything.
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@farbel Amazon isn't just "allowing people to publish AI drek" it pushes me to use their AI translators and AI narrators every time I log into the author portal. It's been using AI to summarize and then bury reviews written by humans. It's PUSHING AI SLOP everywhere. It is literally shoving its chatbots into everything.
@susankayequinn Interesting. When I log in, it doesn't do that. I wonder why? My reviews appear to all be there in their original format. I wonder why? I see that chatbot is an option in the app, if, for some odd reason, a reader wants to ask questions about a book instead of just reading it. I have never come across it in my reading, because I don't do that.
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@susankayequinn Literally just yesterday I learned about Terry Pratchett's German publisher inserting soup ads into The Light Fantastic back in the 90s and I thought "oh that's so gross, surely nobody will ever do that again"
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of…
Stuffed Crocodile (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
@joshsutphin @susankayequinn heh, was going to reply with that
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Makes me crazy that some products simply *can’t* be bought anywhere besides Amazon.
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@susankayequinn Literally just yesterday I learned about Terry Pratchett's German publisher inserting soup ads into The Light Fantastic back in the 90s and I thought "oh that's so gross, surely nobody will ever do that again"
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of…
Stuffed Crocodile (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
@joshsutphin @susankayequinn Wow. And it seems Heyne Verlag (the ad vandal / publishing house) is still in operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyne_Verlag
I wouldn’t have thought you were allowed to piss off both Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett and still keep your book business.
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@susankayequinn Literally just yesterday I learned about Terry Pratchett's German publisher inserting soup ads into The Light Fantastic back in the 90s and I thought "oh that's so gross, surely nobody will ever do that again"
Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts
Back in the 90s (starting with Moving Pictures) Terry Pratchett (yet to be knighted) changed his German publisher. A rather radical move in the market for someone who had been published by Heyne for a dozen books to raising sales. I remember reading it in the Jahrbuch der Science Fiction and Fantasy 1994 (Annual of…
Stuffed Crocodile (gmkeros.wordpress.com)
@joshsutphin @susankayequinn *CERVEZA CRISTAL*
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@joshsutphin @susankayequinn Wow. And it seems Heyne Verlag (the ad vandal / publishing house) is still in operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyne_Verlag
I wouldn’t have thought you were allowed to piss off both Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett and still keep your book business.
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@joshsutphin @susankayequinn Wow. And it seems Heyne Verlag (the ad vandal / publishing house) is still in operation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyne_Verlag
I wouldn’t have thought you were allowed to piss off both Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett and still keep your book business.
Oh, yes, Heyne is one of Germany's biggest publishers of Fantasy, not many ways around them. They publish a LOT of translations.
I don't read Terry Pratchett in German (ugh, I hate translations, most are bad), but I remember books having ads in them myself - very clearly ads, on their own page though, not snuck into the text like Sue's example.
Those ads happened in the 1970s, for some reason. Still, I'm sure it was in the contract.
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@farbel first, you don't know that; second, they're *already* putting chatbots in the ebooks; third, Amazon has a long long LONG history of just rolling out stuff in small batch trials to see how it floats; fourth, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was AI accidentally left in the ebook by a shitty AI enthusiast author; fifth, people have OPENLY talked about ads in ebooks FOREVER; sixth, if this is none of the above, wait a minute, that will change.
Yeah, that looks like an AI-slopped book that hasn't been edited properly. I just spied an m-dash in the next sentence. *snicker*
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@susankayequinn Interesting. When I log in, it doesn't do that. I wonder why? My reviews appear to all be there in their original format. I wonder why? I see that chatbot is an option in the app, if, for some odd reason, a reader wants to ask questions about a book instead of just reading it. I have never come across it in my reading, because I don't do that.
It's above the reviews of every book I look at on Amazon, a "summary" of what people love about the book. It's not labeled as "AI", but that's clearly what it is.
Below that are the usual reviews, they are not changed. But how many people actually read on beyond that summary?
I know people no longer review much on Amazon, either, they just hit the stars at the end of an ebook, and that's it.
I will never review on Amazon again, I use Bookwyrm now.
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@joshsutphin @susankayequinn that was also my first thought since I owned a book with such an ad and I remember being really confused and weirded out by it back then…
(Not sure if it was Terry Pratchett or some other book by the same publisher)@Larymir @joshsutphin @susankayequinn Sometimes I feel ancient. Actually, after the war when pocket books came up, you would find an ad here and there - I remember ads for cigarettes, and yes, soup - like broth, Maggi, I think. It was a German publisher, rororo, I remember. I don't think the author was asked for permission, maybe it was somewhere in the contract. They stopped this eventually - I think once pocket books were more accepted.
This does not mean I condone A.'s behavior. -
Dystopia Status Level: ADS IN BOOKS
My dear readers, you can leave Amazon, I promise. Even reducing Amazon usage helps, but *especially* for books. There are alternatives.
Here's how to find them:
https://susankayequinn.com/how-to-buy-sues-books-a-guide-to-retailers@susankayequinn Centralized ebook platforms can force unwanted revisions into books you've 'bought' with an ease that'd make heads spin at the ministry of truth. No recalls necessary, just quietly push edits. Before I stopped using amazon I saw books I'd owned for years suddenly displaying new covers - and changes to the text would have been just as easy to implement and a lot harder to catch.
