Culturally significant or common household names always found a way into literature but it is the first time I find two mentions of brands so blatantly placed that the only conclusion I’m led to reach is of paid product placement.
The book in question is “The House in the Woods”, by Mark Dawson. In the very first few paragraphs there is a mention to Hello Fresh, with a not so subtle description of the service, along with an admission of a character on how the instructions to prepare a meal are so simple even they can follow it, and a mention to Spotify. Deeper into the book I’ve already noticed a mention of Nescafé instant coffee.
None of these mentioned brands needed to be there. The writer seems proficient enough to be able to write without resorting to such name placements. The story telling is fluid, with a smooth but dense tone to it, which is something I enjoy in crime/drama/mistery novels.
Has this been a thing for a long time and only now I’m noticing the elephant in the room or is this a rising trend?
Everyone needs and deserves to make a living but not like this.
I mean, that’s a more guaranteed way to make a living than hoping the next book will be as well received as the previous one.
We as a society need to step and and support the arts, in the meantime some private companies are doing more for the arts than the consumers are.
What the actual fuck is this take. Corporations polluting the artistic landscape by normalizing covert advertisements is “doing something for the arts”, now? Next you’ll tell me that film executives paying for generic slop film #6338929394 to be made counts as an artistic endowment 😭
If you think product placement is corporations “doing more for art,” then it seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what art actually is.
Art is suffering?
Why should an aspiring artist starve before they gain notoriety?
I think we should fund everyone’s way of life with a universal income, but we aren’t doing that, I don’t fault an artist for trying to find a way to survive this capitalist hellscape. Guaranteed income to write a book that might gain you enough of an audience so you can leave product placement behind, I don’t blame the artist.
Do you think art should only be produced by those with existing means?
This is one of the most deliberately bad faith readings of someone else’s point I’ve ever seen.
Unless we can find a means to cut out of the equation the standard publishing houses to force books to become more affordable, I see it as very difficult.
In my country, paperback pocket edition, historically cheaper and specifically made to draw more readers, simply vanished from the market.
I could buy a full lenght novel anywhere from 3,50€ to 7,50€ and find that kind of book in coffee shops, euro stores, etc. Nowadays, the cheapest I can find a new book starts at 12,50€.
There was a time I thought self publishing could be the answer but the dragons raised their heads and razed that hope.