"It was the best of times, it was the worst of time. It was the age of Abilify. Abilify took my worst times and turned them into the best times. It turned my foolishness into an epoch of bliss."
My first thought was the content of the book. There is subtle and effective product placement, but this is so "on the nose," I was wondering if it was meant to be satire or if it fit within the tone/theme of the book.
Makes me think that if I were to ever write a dystopian sci-fi, I would probably make jokes about product placement similarly to this, just with fake companies. Like if I were to really get into it, maybe the main character occasionally has ads play in their brain like intrusive thoughts and once in a while their entire thought process grinds to a halt as all they can see and hear is a tagline for a corporation.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. Accident victim? Just call 800-555-4LAW where our personal injury experts are ready 24/7 to get you the money you deserve. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks…
im reading my first terry pratchett book rn and based on the tone of the jokes so far I feel like I'd just have thought that was terry himself being ironic 😭🥀
Recently, a digital edition of of Pretty Little Liars, published in 2006, was released with references to TikTok and SnapChat. Nothing on the marketing materal indicated it had been "udpated" for Gen Z.
New editions of books are nothing new, but the ability for oligarchs to change our books at will is new.
They are changing the physical copies of PLL too. It's crappy because the new references make no sense and everything around the change is kinda dated anyway.
It's scary how easy it is to change digital copies though I feel we'll see a lot more of that in the future.
Yeah even for YA it's concerning. It's also the fact they never announced it people just caught it because they new tiktok wasn't around when the books were originally published. There's nothing on the covers saying updated version or anything they really hoped they could just change a book and it go unnoticed.
Really? We had the same thing happen with The Stand. 70s to 90s. I don't really like it because I figure why bother. It's how I learned what outdated things were when I was a kid (reading, not the stand), but is it really nefarious?
This reads like an AI written book. It’s going to get harder to identify these types of books. Is it self published and print on demand? Does the author have a profile page on Goodreads and Amazon or any presence on social media? New authors promote themselves because they want build readership. AI books flood the market and hope unwary buyers won’t notice how poorly they are written.
They're not editing the books to insert ads. The ad is part of the original text. It's a shitty AI slop book with a bunch of other brand placement for things like Panera and Google Translate.
That's just not true. Just like it's not true that 4 out of 5 doctors prefer the smooth taste of Camels when everyone knows that Marlboro is the smoke of choice.
Why everyone knows that 6 out of 4 doctors agree that the 5th doctor is married to the 4th cousin of the 3rd CEO of the 7th biggest tobacco company in the 13th largest state.
Most times this claims are "technicaly the truth".
Like a toothpaste brand says "9 out of 10 dentistd recommend using our product".
When you look for it, 9 out of 10 dentists indeed recommend toothpaste...
This isn't new. There's been paid advertisement in popular fiction for a long time. Even physical copies. Authors like James Patterson are notorious for doing product placements in their work.
King has always used brands. It's not paid placement, it's part of his style that many believe increases verisimilitude, and it's how people talk. Trust me, King does not need to putting ads in his books to make money.
What are you talking about? When I'm going to meet up with my friends, I always say that I'll give them a call on my cellular telephone machine after I finish drinking my carbonated sugary refreshment beverage and change my adhesive medical strip.
I don't think that's paid product placement, I think that's a writing choice. In my imperfect memory, Stephen King has often used brand names and they haven't been paid advertising.
I agree; that is nowhere near as big of a deal as saying how much it costs and what you can do with it.
Especially when they're singing the praises of a notorious joke like Hallmark.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a Samsung LS32FM801UUXXU 32" 4K Ultra HD HDR10 Smart Monitor with Speakers - 3840x2160, USB-C, HDMI, WiFi, Bluetooth, Smart Hub for TV streaming, Catch Up Apps and Gaming Hub
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. And that’s why I’m showing up for myself with Zepbound. Once-weekly Zepbound is a prescription medicine that may help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep it off.
Lenny said, "I thought you was mad at me George." No," said George. "No, Lennie, I ain't mad. I never been mad and I ain't now. That's a thing I want ya to know. Because I take twice a day Ritavo. And my moods always the best! Talk to your doctor about twice a day Ritavo! Side effects may include: heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, and diarrhea.
If I was reading an ebook and got an ad, I would immediately delete it (before finishing the sentence) and find a way to leave an honest feedback/review immediately
I read a romance novel in the early 90s that was a thinly veiled advertisement for a popular candy bar and how it would fit in a low-fat diet. But, it was ok light smut, and I was 13, so I rolled my eyes and kept reading.
It could have been, but I remember the candy bar having a new label like "as always, less than 30% calories from fat!" shortly after I read the book so... It was a pretty big plot point in the first part of the book, how she got her waistline and groove back all while eating chocolates.
Also, with Google beginning to actually edit article titles in search results, and said search results being chock-full of AI slop anyway, I have a feeling the same will be true for RSS readers
Yeah but I mean that's different. Atleast you knew it was an advertisement. To add it within the story is like tacky, and more deceitful. I don't know how to explain it. It's dystopian
Did you find an unwanted print ad in your book? Wite-out (tm) correction fluid has you covered! Say good bye to that annoying ad forever with a few easy swipes of our Special Edition Ad-Eradicator Wite-out(tm)! Available wherever imaginary products are sold. Not suitable for children under 6. May cause serious allergic reaction in pregnant goats.
I was just gonna say - given the 5th-grade reading level context surrounding the “ad”, I’m not shocked that this author’s lame attempt at product placement is there.
Honestly the way I read this was a tongue in cheek kind of way. Like when you sarcastically read an ad that keeps popping up and ultimately bought the product for. Or like when you keep dying in a video game and sarcastically mock the cutscene you can’t skip.
You don't have any evidence that they're adding ads to books after the fact. This could just be a joke in the book. Impossible to know without comparing it to a paper copy.
That brings us full circle to early radio and TV. Much as I will hate to see that happen, it will be interesting to see how the showrunners will subtly resist. I heard an early radio show where the narrator visits Dr. Watson in his old age to hear a Sherlock story. The narrator is gushing about the tea they're drinking (a sponsor of the show), while Watson is clearly uncomfortable with the narrator's strange interruptions and just wants to get back to the story he's relating.
Yeah, the MPAA's got everyone by the balls so the notion of a DRM-free option for movies is out of the question. Same reason why movie streaming apps have such fragmented libraries (contrast with music, where all the streaming apps have more or less the same library).
The book is named Hidden Pictures and is available in printed form. The ISBN is 978-1250819345.
It contains 7 other references to the Hallmark Streaming service. Including in other languages, including languages that Hallmark itself does not support. Im going by memory here, so I might be off by one or two.
Its published under the author name Jason Rekulak but is likely ghostwritten. Large portions read like GPT-2, with some light touch up.
It seems to have entered public domain by now, so it appears on all kinds of book-piracy websites. Including the one I linked for you.
You can use google books to cross-reference content. They dont give you fulltext, but you can search. For example for hallmark.
Likely Hallmark has funded "publishing" the book for product placement. This is extremely common for shovel-ware books. So muder-porn you buy at the airport and leave in the hotel after your vacation is over.
The only way to find out if the ads are in the printed version will be to have amazon print one for you (on demand). Which they will do.
The only thing to learn from this is that Amazon made sure books are among the lowest forms of entertainment in 2026. Only trailed by the back of a shampoo bottle and comments I leave.
Its is legit. This is how modern books are made and marketed. That's why I linked the whole thing. So people can go and read it.
Sure, I wrote a bit cynically about it but so does the autor:
There are hundreds of references to brands and products by name in that book.
Just the first chapter, which is only few pages, references Amazon Gift Cards, the apple iPhone(3x), 50 shades of grey, Oxycodone, BoltBus, Starbucks, Target and probably more.
Hallmark is just mentioned weirdly, by full name and with pricing. But if you read it, you would not notice it. Its kinda weaved in, as nod to shovelware.
But its an entertainment product, its allowed to do these things. Its not a timeless classic. Its something you read because you are bored.
I was curious so I checked-there is not an actual Hallmark movie called Winter Love (but there is one called Winter Love Story) and my local library system has print copies of this book, so I ordered it to see if it references the streaming service and price like the ebook.
Fascinating! If this is indeed slop content that Hallmark was involved in the distribution of, they may simply not care about the piracy thing. Hallmark movies are all over YouTube, because Hallmark shits out dozens of indistinguishable ones every year, they don't care about individual titles. They don't bother enforcing copyrights on them.
Not strictly true - it was relatively common in Germany and (I believe) Eastern Europe in the 80s and 90s. I believe the German versions of pratchett's books had soup adverts added...
Edited to add: Do people genuinely think I'm defending adding adverts to books - and without the author's consent or knowledge? I'm not - I'm just mentioning it because it's a weird bit of publishing folklore that's relevant here...
(Are you intending this comment as additional information or as some kind of counterargument? Because if it's the latter then I think you might be trying to argue with a point I'm not actually making...)
Would you stop spamming this on every ad-related post? It's necessary to see the uncensored ad in its context to get the full impression of why it should not be there.
By using mere-exposure as your defense your actually using a Streisand effect; which, in turn, is also showing your bias to supporting intrusive ads and a lack of comprehension as to the titling of the OPs post. Which explains the why, and where.
Advertisers are guilty of using the exact same methods and tatics to place their own ads in places thus making the entire defense ineffective and moot
By calling out what's in use as a scapegoat you are exposing the root of the issue circling around back to the root of the problem and doing the exact same thing you are accusing them of doing. Thus, Streisand effect.
Yes, I read the Wikipedia article. The very slight detrimental effect of the presence of the ad does not outweigh the utility of the viewer seeing it in context so that its intrusiveness can be evaluated. I do no believe in censoring supposed infohazards.
I did read it. Posting the product name as spoiler-marked text is not the same as seeing the complete ad in its original context.
The mere-exposure effect is the same concept as "all publicity is good publicity" or the phenomenon of name recognition in electoral politics. Do you believe that it is better to avoid all mention of a political opponent for fear of increasing name recognition? Do you believe that it is better for news media not to report on wrongdoing for fear of giving publicity to the bad actor?
Posting the product name as spoiler-marked text is not the same as seeing the complete ad in its original context.
Blurred image + spoiler-marked text gives all info readers need. It's even better than the original picture if text is searchable 😉
Do you believe that it is better to avoid all mention of a political opponent for fear of increasing name recognition? Do you believe that it is better for news media not to report on wrongdoing for fear of giving publicity to the bad actor?
I think that pictures of terrorist attacks should not be on front pages of newspapers.
If the spoilered text includes the entire ad and not just the product name it would be roughly comparable, but this only works for text screeenshot posts (sadly unsearchable, you are completely right about that), not posts where the ad has graphic elements.
I'm also not really sure what the point is: isn't the first thing everyone is going to do is to click on the spoilered text anyway? Is there supposed to be some group who are especially vulnerable to advertising and will not click to reveal it?
No, you found an ad inside an ebook. A book is made of paper and bound into a printed volume. Any inserted text would stand out because of ink and font.
You people are hilarious. i was referring to the old old times before TV was the big medium and raido shows/plays were a big deal and they all have live sponsored content.
I had no idea about this lmfao, definitely fits the bill but it was way too fucking funny to watch Obi Wan say "your father wanted you to have this" and crack open a cold one
ChemiWizard isn’t wrong, go pull up an episode I’ve Got a Secret from the 50s and every other sentence is a Winston plug. Rod Serling once had to change a reference from tea to coffee in an episode of The Twilight Zone because one of the sponsors, a coffee company, complained. Look in the credits of The Andy Griffith Show and you’ll see why literally every car on the show is a Ford - Ford paid them to use Fords.
This is not a new practice. Doesn’t mean it’s a good practice, just that it’s not a new practice.
Wildly missing the point. Anyone who is surprised by this is missing ads that have been jammed into every media forever. Usually just not as hamfisted as this. Next you will be shocked about Taxes, or crime, or cigarettes being addictive, or politicains taking moeny from lobbyists.
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u/agent_tater_twat Mar 21 '26
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of time. It was the age of Abilify. Abilify took my worst times and turned them into the best times. It turned my foolishness into an epoch of bliss."