Brand names and protagonists as role models…
Like many children, I admired various sports figures. Roy Campanella, Brooklyn Dodgers’ catcher, was a role model. I played that position and later admired the man for his tenacity and courage in facing his paralysis after an auto accident. I also became a Dodgers fan and was overjoyed when they moved to L.A. K. C. Jones and Bill Russell were favorites at the University of San Francisco and I followed their careers to the Boston Celtics where I became a fan, even though I was on the West Coast. The historic confrontations between Russell and Chamberlain were more exciting than the gunfight between the Earps and the Clantons.
I can’t remember seeing any of these three athletes drink or smoke, or reading about their philandering ways in the national media. A simpler, more innocent time? Perhaps. Steroids in baseball were far in the future. Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant were too. Nevertheless, I can imagine how devastating it might be for a young boy or girl to see and hear about the decline of one of their sports heroes. It must be at least as stressful as that first kiss or that first dance.
I started a life of reading with comic books. The comic book store in The Big Bang sitcom was King’s Cigar Store just down from Main Street in my hometown. My father would buy his smoking supplies—first cigarettes, then cigars, and finally pipe tobacco—and chat with the owner, a massively obese man (Mr. King?) who waddled when he walked. I would peruse the comic book stacks, keeping one eye on the candy counter to see if Dad would buy anything for me there (he and I both liked the mint patties). Those comic book heroes eventually turned into space opera heroes.
Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, and other ‘zines captured my attention. Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter also provided hours of entertainment, so much so that I was probably one of the few people disappointed with Star Wars because of the obvious plagiarism. (Later reading of Asimov’s Foundation series made the disappointment more intense.) Other sci-fi and adventure books provided a multitude of heroes to emulate. Moreover, not satisfied with the selection, I even began to create some of my own heroes, thus starting my life as a writer.
Now I’m a full-time writer. What’s more, I have followed the advice of Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler and become exclusively an indie eBook author. Soldiers of God is my only previous trade paperback left that I need to re-release as an eBook (it’s on my to-do list, don’t worry). It has occurred to me, however, that the eBook media is so versatile that using it exclusively for text will probably become a thing of the past as it evolves to multimedia—text, sound, images (3D?), maybe even odors? That evolution has already started in a few cases.
However, let’s return to those sports figures and protagonists I emulated as a boy. Authors, especially authors of children’s books and YA novels, romance novels, fantasy novels, and others, have a responsibility. In our eBooks, almost all of us provide a URL to our website or Amazon page where our other books can be found. This is product placement, of course, and there’s no reason it can’t be included in the text of the book. However, brand names are also often mentioned. Suppose I like Irish whiskey. I’m more likely to write “Jameson’s” in my prose than just “Irish whiskey”—it makes the prose more realistic.
Similarly, if my character Mr. X is a popular role model at the beginning of the story but then he becomes a real SOB as the tale develops, have I betrayed my reader? This question pounded in my head like a migraine when I was writing my YA novel, The Secret Lab, for example. In general, since my characters’ behaviors often mimic real people, even the best of them will have qualities that not everyone likes. For example, if Joe is an outstanding cop and family man, what does it mean if he smokes or drinks too much, or succumbs to temptation and sleeps with a prostitute? Are readers really looking for role models?
Even YA readers nowadays recognize that good people have flaws. They realize and expect, even if subconsciously, that an important part of the story is how good people rise above the trials and tribulations that fate throws in their face. Their personal flaws are just part of that struggle. The author takes a flawed hero and throws him into stressful situations, one after the other, until the hero finally prevails or completely fails, the classic distinction between Shakespearean comedy and tragedy. Goethe and other Germanic writers called it Sturm und Drang, although modern literature adds psychological introspection, logic, and reason to the mix.
Will adding a product placement to your novel ruin the story? There are two quick editing checks you, the author, can perform. Ask yourself: Does it matter? Does it add anything? For example, I was surprised that no one worried about the type of underwear the “underwear bomber” was wearing. I tried to google it. Apparently nobody cares about the type. It doesn’t really matter, but I suppose they were boxers, not briefs. Clearly, the brand is even less important.
On the other hand, certain product placements can add sophistication to a story or make it seem more real. Ian Fleming used this technique to add sophistication to his James Bond, who was one tough MI6 agent otherwise. In fact, Bond was a bon vivant who often got his woman as well as his man, so he could even serve as a role model for pubescent boys (parents might debate about whether this role model is positive). Does his “license to kill” nullify his positive qualities? No, because he only kills the villains who deserve to die.
What does all this mean for eBooks? There is the possibility that in some future novel of mine I will mention Jameson’s and the brand name will be linked to a website. Maybe I will do this because Jameson’s gives me royalties or helps finance the eBook or whatever. This kind of crass commercialism already exists in blogs like this one. What’s worse is that search engines like Google reward your website’s rank for these links and, moreover, doesn’t distinguish between a link to a commercial product’s website and one belonging to a colleague.
Where will it all end? Can you imagine reading Harry Potter when he gets that first wand and seeing “Click here to visit the wand shop”? It might force a book to be made before the movie! We might experience a mish-mash between the verbal and the visual. Or, will all this just be a stepping stone to the zookies described in my Survivors of the Chaos where books are replaced by software and hardware that allow you to participate in role-playing virtual reality stories? The possibilities are endless. Some will be positive, some negative. Let’s hope we can tell the difference.
And so it goes….
