Product Placement in Novels
I was reading this article today after Jury Duty and found it quite interesting. It discusses different views and methods for product placement in novels, specifically for teens and preteens. Me? I’d never really thought about that before, and naive as I am, I was surprised to find that some authors do this.
It discusses two different viewpoints on this:
1. Making an agreement with companies to include product placement.
2. Name-dropping a product and hoping to be compensated.
That’s nice, I guess, but they leave out the one that I think most authors do when they mention a particular brand or product in their novels.
3. Name-dropping a product and expecting no compensation because it’s just part of the story.
At least, that’s how I am about naming specific brands. I have done this in previous stories in regards to a band or television show or beverage, but nowhere in my mind did it occur to me that I would be compensated for this. To me, I would get compensation enough getting the novel in bookstores. I don’t feel that I need more than that.
Not that I look down on others with the other two viewpoints. Plenty of movies and television shows do this all the time. I suppose I’m just surprised because it never occurred to me that an author would be purposely making money off of the fact that her character is a big fan of Starbucks. But I guess it does happen.
However, while I do not judge other authors for doing this, I have to give an emphatic no to ever doing it with any of my work. Every detail written, every detail that I obsess over, needs to be important and relevant to the story. I’m not going to add it unless it needs to be in there. So, if my character wears lipstick, would I need to specify what brand it is? If I don’t, then I’m not going to add it just to make a few extra bucks.
Filed under: writing
