What's the situation on selling ad-space inside self published works, legally and practically? Been thinking of ways to defray cost-of-publication, especially for anthologies, and I'm just like. The back pages in a self-pubbed book someone bought... ...are pointing directly at paying customers.
considering how much of that space is used to advertise other books these days, as long as it's something worth hitching yourself to, i really don't see the harm
It's ordinarily 'other books from the same publisher', but... given that we're all self publishing, it strikes me that the situation's quite different.
I think a small problem you might run into is that a lot of the people who might be interested are also self-pubbers who are looking to defray costs, and advertising is going to be an increase in their costs.
Yeah. Plus, one of the things that make it work for 'other books by the same publisher' is that there's also a degree of known quality control, there. That's an unknown in the self-pub space. Although given people pay Amazon to put ads next to other people's books... ads in books isn't a jump.
Honestly, I get enough ads everywhere... I'd be really turned off by ads in a book. It's one thing to recommend a book or advertise your own book, but ads for other books would be a no from me. Reading is the one media not ad saturated...
I know what you mean. I've been thinking about the economics of putting together multi-author anthologies, and getting together enough funds to pay everyone involved what they're worth, up front, is... not easy. A lot of magazines used to rely on advertising income for that. But... Ads do suck.
I love the idea of ads in the back of printed works! They were such a fun bonus in the back of old magazines
Running across a form to join the fan club of a given book series or whatever, in the back of the books, was always wild.
It used to be pretty common in Germany and Terry Pratchett ended up ditching his publisher over there because they wouldn't promise to stop inserting a random soup ad paragraph in the middle of a scene. Not much help to you but fun.
The infamous THIRST Rincewind developed for Maggi Soup. INFAMOUS.