this reminds me of a similarly incredible Terry Pratchett story - he switched publishers in Germany because his original publisher inserted soup ads directly into the text of his books and wouldn’t promise to stop doing it
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What?!
I remember hearing in the 90s that German fans preferred to read it in Dutch because the German translations weren't funny, but that is just bizarre.
I'm surprised Pratchett never worked that into a plotline, because that is some grotesque and absurb C.M.O.T Dibler profiteering going on.
more details here - imagine losing Terry Pratchett just as he was blowing up into an international megastar because you couldn’t stop putting soup ads into his book
I have an old mass market paperback edition of Moby Dick which has a two-page ad for Aral fuel in it. The whole ads in books thing was wild in Germany for a while.
apparently it tracked back to the 60s, on the basis of “we’re publishing cheap genre crap that might not sell so at least we can be assured of making some money on soup ads”
as SFF got more mainstream and popular they just never changed the policy, until, well, oops
I own a lot of cheap paperbacks with full-color glossy ads for cigarettes and whiskey stitched into the binding, which I find delightful, but I’ve never seen an ad *in the text*
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I wonder if that was at least part of the inspiration for Dibbler's shameless advertising in Moving Pictures.
Clearly I need to read that one again.
I remember hearing in the 90s that German fans preferred to read it in Dutch because the German translations weren't funny, but that is just bizarre.
I'm surprised Pratchett never worked that into a plotline, because that is some grotesque and absurb C.M.O.T Dibler profiteering going on.
I guess I should get someone to pry Going Postal out of my fingers and reread a different one 😊
We put in my contract no tobacco ads of any kind, as Warner was experimenting with ad cardboard in the paperbacks they released.
They didn't want to have to take individual ads out of mine, so none of my Warner books have ads at all. :)
as SFF got more mainstream and popular they just never changed the policy, until, well, oops
https://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/2015/02/14/whats-rihannsu-soup/