Sometimes academic studies and works can be entirely funded by an outside group. Transparency about these sorts of projects is desirable, and people may react to the resulting work skeptically. This is exactly what happened to one of the authors of the James Bond novels, William Boyd. He’s just released a 17,000-word story “The Vanishing Game,” for which Land Rover paid six figures. The company gave him major creative license in composing the story, telling him only that it “would be good” if a Land Rover appeared at some point. Apparently (although I just started reading the story), the Land Rover Defender only appears in the novella as the protagonist’s car as he sets off for Scotland. Boyd defends himself to the Times, pointing out “If I was approached to write a Batman movie I would assume it would have to feature Batman. There’s really no difference in this case.” But, apparently, there is a difference for readers and publishing houses, who have been giving Boyd a hard time. And a difference for writers too, the majority of whom will not agree to do commercial endorsements like this. As for me, I typically will take a good story wherever I can get one, but I like to know if it’s only a clever ad campaign.
Posted by Margaret Ryznar on November 16, 2014 at 03:26 PM
Comments
Not everyone Batman show requires you to feature Batman..
http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-foxs-gotham-gives-us-a-batman-show-without-batman
Posted by: Matthew Bruckner | Nov 20, 2014 7:34:43 AM
Definitely not novel, just really rare. The only other ones I could find were: Julia Alvarez’s poem for Absolut vodka, Elmore Leonard’s and Lisa Scottoline’s essays for Coca-Cola, and Hillary Carlip’s book for Sweet’N Low. There are probably more, but it’s rare (or at least not public).
Posted by: Margaret Ryznar | Nov 17, 2014 6:21:35 PM
Not entirely novel. See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulgari_Connection
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Nov 17, 2014 8:20:35 AM
Good question. Product placements are common in movies — including Bond, James Bond cars. I am not sure why this is different but it does seem a little different, perhaps because it seems “novel.” Seems like the worse it could do is detract from the story if it means the reader thinks, “why is the brand relevant.”
Posted by: Jeff Harrison | Nov 16, 2014 10:53:35 PM