Read Any Good Ads Lately? in the Washington Post explores a new trend to pay authors to write books that sell. Sell cars, luxury products, and Twinkies that is.
Apparently, Lexus hired Los Angeles writer Mark Haskell Smith to write a serial potboiler novel featuring its newest car for the company's quarterly magazine.
An excerpt from Smith's "Black Sapphire Pearl" reads:
"The Lexus loaner turned out to be a GS Hybrid. To say it was an upgrade from the battered Crown Vic I'd driven with the LAPD would be an understatement. For one, you don't need a key. You keep the remote control thing in your pocket and to start the car you just push a button on the dash. Like on a computer. In fact the car's more like a super-powered laptop on wheels than anything else."
According to the Washington Post, "There was little the company did to encroach on [Smith's] artistic freedom in writing the serial novel, other than to question his assertion that you can't find a good taco outside of Los Angeles and to nix a sex scene."
The Post mentions several other cases of advertising in fiction, pointing out that this trend started years ago with Charles Dickens and was often seen in comic books thirty years ago.
Some consider this is unethical, but product placement is commonplace in movies. Remember E.T. and his Reese's Pieces?
Whatever your opinion of product placement, this is definitely a trend for authors to keep an eye on.
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I have been watching the media response to the Washington Post article with some amusement. "Black Sapphire Pearl" is not a novel. (and, no, Lexus didn't give me a car or a giant bag of money) It is a short story (8,000 words) commissioned for Lexus magazine. It was written exclusively for Lexus owners. So it's not product placement in an actual novel. It was a "work for hire magazine" piece. I wouldn't let a corporation interfere with one of my real novels, not for any price.
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