A bunch of people have recently drawn my attention to the product placement
of Ford cars in Carole Matthews’s novel The Sweetest Taboo. My Past Due letters were a response to a similar situation, Faye Weldon getting paid by Bulgari to mention their brand — I proactively invoiced the companies whose brands I mentioned in my novel of a hyper-marketed future, Everyone In Silico.
The cover of The Sweetest Taboo has the tagline, “The best things in life are never free.” I’ve decided to retaliate against this smug sentiment by releasing a free e-book version of Everyone In Silico. I’ve distributed thousands of copies of my previous novels in free e-book form since the 2000 release of Angry Young Spaceman, but not for EIS — I was curious to see if it would impact my sales significantly.
It hasn’t.
I’m kind of sad to leave behind the CD-ROM format for my digital zine, we’ve had some good times together, but with more and more people owning DVD players and burners and media costing less and less, it was a no-brainer. Not to mention that a poll on the site indicated that given a choice between a $5 CD-ROM and a $15 DVD, twice as many people prefered the new format.