Ethics code would help e-books supported by ads

The Association of American Publishers and the American Advertising Federation should come up with an ethics code for ad-supported books—a good way to boost the credibility of the medium.

Such a code, building on the federation’s existing one, would help allay legitimate concerns about advertisers tainting the books. Near the front, in a small type but noticeable just the same, books could detail relationships between authors and the advertisers. Another strategy at times might be to avoid ads for products or services about which the writers wrote. Instead the ads could be about demographically related offerings.

Getting it right

Freeload Press—and, yes, here’s a reminder of the OpenReader and dotReader efforts in which I’m involved, with Freeload using dotReader in the near future—has it just right. Books from Freeload will offer ads for FedEx Kinko’s. It isn’t as if textbook writers are normally going to write about FedEx or Kinko’s. At the same time, however, we know that students are heavy users of services from FedEx Kinko’s.

A similar idea would apply to local businesses like pizza restaurants. Do you really think that the writer or editor of an economics book cares about advertising from Rinaldi’s Pizza? That’s different from an anti-regulatory ad by, say, GE. Perhaps my best-scenario idea of separation is stricter than the actual practices of many publishers—notice the issues-related advertising in opinion magazines?—but at the very least books should disclose conflicts and potential conflicts.

No booze ads in Charlotte’s Web…

While the conflict-of-interest issue is the main one on my mind, I’d also welcome other kinds of restrictions on the kinds of products advertised. I do not want advertising for tobacco or alcoholic products appearing in books targeted at teenagers. Even at the college undergraduate level, in my opinion, it’s a bad idea.

Perhaps with a comprehensive and well-enforced code in place—ideally with heavy participation from librarians and educations—ad-supported books would even be safe for libraries. Yes, librarians could have the option of turning off the ads later on if/when funds were available. Keep in mind, too, that ads already appear in magazines and newspapers to which libraries subscribe.

…And no slashing of library budgets

Something I’m emphatically against is the reduction of library funding because of the existence of books supported wholly or partly by ads. The idea is to help libraries stay competitive with alternatives and increase the number of books offered—not shrink their budgets.

As it is, libraries spend just a fraction of their budgets on content of all kinds, so ad-supported books could help immensely. Librarians could continue their important function of helping patrons find, enjoy and benefit from good books, paper and electronic alike.

I’d be delighted to hear from librarians and educators about the above, whatever their opinions. I’m still mulling this one over.

Be proactive

In the library area and others, I hope that industry leaders will consider the possibilities here but avoid the genuine negatives from the start. Why not preempt the critics like the Tucson newspaper, which is probably less worried about ethics issues than about competing ad outlets?

We could take the paper more seriously about conflict-of-interest issues if it came out with a rip-roaring editorial suggesting the use of tax money to buy students free textbooks—my own favorite solution. I’ve been pushing for years for a well-stocked national digital library system to provide textbooks and others for free. Politicians right now at this point are not listening, and besides, I don’t want a TeleRead approach to be the only one out there, given the risks of pols and bureaucrats controlling our reading. So with the digital and educational divides still very much present, let’s stay open to other innovative business models such as ads in e-books—and use a well-drafted, well-enforced ethics code to do it right.