This chapter brought to you by...

The first time I had Samuel Adams beer, it was because Spenser drank one and really liked it. I figured why not try one? I did, and I liked it.

Product placement has long been a staple in movies and television shows. How often, when you watch a TV show, does someone's laptop have the ubiquitous Apple logo on its cover? In books, however, the product placement, like Spenser drinking Sam Adams, has been about telling the readers something about a character.

But, as the wave of multimedia advances into the book market and e-books take up a bigger niche, can product placement be far behind? After all, if Spenser's going to drink a Sam Adams anyway, shouldn't Robert B. Parker receive some money for the people who click through the mention to the Sam Adams website? Affiliate programs work this way all the time. If a certain number of people click through to the website, you get paid for the traffic.

I'm up for a few extra bucks, especially if I were going to use that brand in my story anyway. (My character, Shane Black, is partial to Magic Hat beer, which you can't get in Florida.)

Less comforting is the prospect of cash-strapped publishers inking deals with companies for product placement in their e-books. It's one thing for Spenser to drink Sam Adams because the product says something about the character. It's quite another for him to drink Miller Genuine Draft because the publisher inked a deal with Miller Brewing Company.

To be fair, forced product placement isn't on the horizon yet. E-books are still a niche, and will continue to be so until the price of the hardware comes down. But down the road, your e-books will almost certainly have room for ads, and will allow you to click through to supporting information about a specific passage. If you'll be able to do that, someone will certainly find a way to make money from it.

Without a Focus on Print

Thanks to Shelly Lieber, I ran across on article called Writers and the recession: Writers Digest's Jane Friedman talks about problems and solutions. It's a long title, but a worthwhile read.

In it, Jane Friedman, a publisher and editorial director at Writer's Digest, effectively says that everything is changing. The rules that we've worked to hard to understand and exploit (have a strong query, get an agent, get a publisher, wait, wait, wait, maybe catch lightning in a bottle) have changed. She says you need to create diverse products without a focus on print. That's where the opportunity lies.

The bad news is that publishers--cash strapped as they are--are looking for a sure thing. The good news is that it's never been easier to go around publishers and agents and get your work noticed. The Internet is changing the way we disseminate information and deal with intellectual property. This blog has already pointed out two instances in which people effectively gave away their work and made money anyway.

The writers, unlike musicians, can't use their writing as a loss leader, making up the difference in tour dates and other merchandise. I don't care how well you write, you'll probably never pack Raymond James Stadium with tens of thousands of adoring fans. And if you do, you'll do it to market your book. So you have to make money on your written word.

But how?

That's what's going to change over the coming years. What if you found a rivetting detective novel written on a blog? Wouldn't you go back to see the next chapter? What if you could download an MP3 of a story and listen to it on your iPod? What if your readers could interact with your story, posting comments and engaging you with questions and ideas?

All of these are opportunities for writers. And therein lies both the challenge and the potential for making yourself unique.

Someone's going to figure it out over the next three years or so, and that person will make an enormous amount of money breaking through a new barrier. At the end of the day--and the end of this economic downturn--the writing world will be different than it is now. The challenge is figuring out how and applying your writing and marketing skills to the new world that emerges.