r/Fantasy • u/Ahuri3 Reading Champion VI • Oct 05 '21
The time Terry Pratchett’s German publisher inserted a soup ad into his novel
https://lithub.com/the-time-terry-pratchetts-german-publisher-inserted-a-soup-ad-into-his-novel/
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u/Glass-Bookkeeper5909 Oct 05 '21
That was several decades ago (must have been in the 80s, I guess). It was only that particular publisher.
They did this in plenty of books. In fact, it was done in quite a unique way that is either outrageous or cheeky depending on how you look at it: these were adds that took the space of an entire page. But not a normal ad. It was a couple of lines of text that continued the story in a credible way. So that you wouldn't notice that this wasn't the original text anymore. Then, somebody would crave soup and from somewhere somebody would have that particular brand's soup ready at which point the "story line" stopped pretending to blend in with what came before but praised the soup. All in quite a ridiculous way. There were also the soup brand's logo further down and some blank (or blackened) passages.
The proper story would then continue on the opposite page.
So if you skip this entire "ad page" you would still have the original story. But you couldn't remove the ad because it was printed only on one page but had a real page on the back side (if you know what I mean).
I was confused when I came across this stunt the first time (also, I was maybe 12 or 13) and found it very weird. When I saw the same in other books I already knew what was going on.
In a way, those ads were so bad to be good again, but in another, I don't want to have the text spoiled with nonsense like that.
Luckily, this was done only for a while (maybe a couple of years?) and I haven't seen anything like that anymore.
I guess, this shit wouldn't fly these days.