Announcing a Brand New Idea That's Unlike Any Other You've Ever Heard Of. (Ad It Up, 1)

As usual, you have to sit through a lot of blather to get to the idea. But bear with me.

Yesterday, as I was driving to Milwaukee and listening to Johnny Cash's Ballad of a Teenage Queen, I had a great idea, and that great idea began like this: Everybody says they hate advertisements, but nobody ever does anything about it.

Everybody, and nobody, that is, except me. Because not only do I like advertisements, but I also am doing something about it.

You know I like ads if you've ever read my blog The Best of Everything, where I've touted ads as being great for things like finding music, and nostalgically reminisced about some of them. I'm not alone in liking ads, but I am alone in proclaiming my love for them, or at least my love for some of them.

Most people just down advertisements and complain about them, but they do that for two reasons, I figure.

One, most people don't realize just how great ads make the world, and

Two, most ads suck.

Ads make the world great because they make the world cheaper, if not free.

You read stuff on the Internet, and watch stuff on network TV, all the time, and you don't pay anything for most of that content that's given to you. You don't pay extra to read Slate online, you don't have to feed dollar bills into the television to see How I Met Your Mother, and the reason for that is because those things are paid for by someone else: advertisers. Pop-ups, sponsored links, online ads, television commercials: those people are paying for your entertainment.

If it wasn't for ads, you'd have to pay to Google stuff and magazine subscriptions would be impossible to come by; those things are free, or affordable, because of ads. Even things like Youtube and Hulu are getting in on the act: watch a brief commercial, then watch a whole movie for free. If you're like me, and had to pay to see "Weekend At Bernie's" when it was in the theater, you'll understand how awesome it is to watch that movie anytime I want, for the small admission of watching a commercial first.

So I was thinking about that, and listening to Johnny Cash, and I wondered why is it that music and books never got into the advertising swing of things? That is, why don't CDs and Books have ads in them?

That's an important question, so I'm gonna ask it again:

Why don't CDs and Books have ads in them?

What makes them so special? Imagine this: Imagine you could download an album... I'll pick one at random. Let's say you could download the latest album from Murder Mystery (who you know as The Greatest Rock Band In The History of Ever) and, when you went to download it (it's called Are You Ready For The Heartache Cause Here It Comes) you were given two choices:

1. Download the album for $9.99, or
2. Download the album for $3.99, but each song has a 1-3 second commercial at the beginning and end of the song, a commercial that you'll hear each time you hear the song.

Which would you choose?

I'd go for the $3.99 version, every time. Every single time. I know that eventually my iPod would have commercials all over it -- but I'd have 2 or 3 times as much music on there as I do now.

Now, picture a book. Hardcover books cost $20 or $30 nowadays. Those literary-fiction paperbacks are $12-18 apiece. Even little mass market paperbacks are $5-10. Books are expensive, so I have to buy fewer than I want -- so fewer books are sold and I'm pickier about what I read, and I read more books from the library instead of from the bookstore.

But what if, when I went to Barnes & Noble (or my local independent bookstore, I know), I had a choice: Buy an ad-free hardcover for $30, or buy a hardcover that has ads in it for $15.

Again: I'm taking the ads.

Before you scoff at me, remember this: there's already ads in almost everything you read, and there's already ads in your books. Yep: In your books. Your books!

Ever flip around in the beginning and end of the book? There's other books by this author and other books by this publisher and there used to be coupons in books to write the publisher and order other books.

So with all that, I finally am getting around to what Ad It Up is, and this is what it is: A celebration of advertising, and also a brand-new business model for books.

Here's the celebration part: I'm going to, here and on The Best of Everything, comment on and post, from time to time, ads and what I like about them. So June on The Best of Everything will feature ads as MiniBests, and I'll put great (or terrible) ads on here from time to time, too, to help break down the culture war against advertising.

And, more importantly (for me) I'm also selling ad space in my next book.

That's right: You can advertise in my next book.

I've already independently published one novella (the critically acclaimed Eclipse) and I'm hard at work on my next venture, which is a collection of literary short stories called "Just Exactly What Life Looks Like." This collection, which is in final editing now, will be published this summer or early fall (I'm a slow editor) and will feature stories about cowboys and lions and painters and scientists and school teachers. Two of the stories ("Buzzards Loop" and "Thinking The Lions") were previously published. (You can read the latter here.)

To help promote and test the waters for my idea, I'm offering the opportunity to advertise in my book for the low low low price of $1 per ad -- $2 if I design the ad, and $3 if you want the back cover.

Here's what you get: For your buck (or 2 or 3 bucks) you'll get a full-page permanent ad in every copy of Just Exactly What Life Looks Like that gets printed, and you'll get frequent mentions here on my blog -- when you buy the ad, when I design the ad, when the book comes out -- and you'll be listed on a special page in the book as a Patron of the Arts, with a reference to your ad.

I'm hoping that enough people will take me up on this that I can offer Just Exactly What Life Looks Like for free -- because I want people to read my books, and I want people to buy your stuff.

So if you're interested, contact me through comments or email me at thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com. Make sure to put "Ad It Up" in the subject line, or your email might end up being deleted the way I delete all those emails from bands asking me to name them the greatest. Sorry guys -- Murder Mystery's got it all locked up.

And look for Ad It Up as another regular feature here on Thinking The Lions.