Ad Subsidized Ebooks
TRAUMAWIEN Lukas Gross and Bernhard Bauch 2014

1. Title and brief description
2. Project description
3. > Relational publishing <
4. Participants
5. Communication/Native Advertising

1. Title and brief description

Ebooks are the last advertisment free refuge. The projects aim is to technically aswell as theoretically explore possibilities, dangers and threats of in-text advertising and ebooks.

By deliberately perverting possible scenarios in an artistic way, the project wants to raise awareness on the topics of literature, advertising and technology.

The Project is based on a relational publishing model, which we introduce at this point.  

2. Project description

Until now, books were the last advertisement free refuge.
We programmed an algorithm-prototype to automatically context-contaminate digital Text with Ad- Slogans drawn from a database. We want to investigate possibilities of Ad-Subsidized eBooks as well as authenticity of text in Ad-driven environments by manipulating current ebook Bestsellers aswell as 'liquid texts'.

Jeff Bezos does not make a big secret that he would like to sell books for next to nothing. He clearly stated that 'advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service'.

Amazon sees the future of books in advertising.
They currently operate on device- and shop-level, but there is no doubt in-line content will be used too, opening a whole new field to generate profits: not only Reading Devices are about to become full- fledged advertising machines, but also content they're carrying.

The Amazon Book Business isn't run by Bibliophiles. The idea is that books can be sold at nothing, given away for free — subsidized by Advertisements.

If today, publishing crisis are mentioned, particularly with newspapers, it means advertising revenues fell sharply. All the success in "revenues" was always counted on advertisements. We all know, we're in the middle of a dramatic change in digital takeover, the traditional industry hardly can deal with. And as internet advertising became apparent when Google began its inline ad model, changing everything on the internet we used to know from earlier fun times, advertising will be Amazons model aswell, producing a proprietary web3.0 on that base of inline book advertising.

From that point, different scenarios are possible and to be explored in an artistic way:
> How could companies be involved? > How would a "brand Hijack" with ebooks look like, > practically? What impact would graphics and logos give? > How could they be incorporated into liquid texts? > How could a payement system, an alternative revenue model work?

We don't want to answer questions like these, but show them practically to create awareness and encourage authors to think about those facts of a system they must relay on.

The project is rooted in TRAUMAWIEN's explorations of digital text. We investigate digital Literature on a professional level since 2010 and have published artists such as Mez Breeze, UBERMORGEN or J.R. Carpenter.
Since 2012 we create native projects based on our Research. 

Our projects were shown at festivals around Europe and were presented by Süddeutsche Zeitung, M.I.T Technologyreview or Techdirt and others.

We research on this topic since beginning of 2012.

The main implementation will be programmed in python using the 'natural language toolkit' which also is used by google extensively for almost everything concerning language. Goal would be a most unintrusive way to incorporate advertisements into literature, or 'make advertising literature'. The algorithms are written by Bernhard Bauch, Berlin.

3. Communication / Advertising

TRAUMAWIEN will use their existing, international network to communicate the project. TRAUMAWIEN is frequently invited to festivals and symposiums.

Of course, we will try to use the 'nature of the project': advertising in ebooks, to promote the project. Maybe by Hijacking Bestsellers. In a similar way we did it with Kindle'Voke Ghostwriters, by undercutting the system, abusing it to sensibilize consumers. 

Native Advertising is the nature of this project. In a field not modulated with advertising yet - large chunks of text.

4. Relational Publishing

The Ad Subsidized Ebook Project is based on a relational Publishing Model, which we are trying to define.

Publishers have to be mindful of the symbiotics of physical, digital, social, cultural, technological, and economic factors, in addition to poetical/aesthetical concerns.
Relational publishing is preoccupied with publishing's effects, extending beyond the form of the publishing object and its attendant meanings and cultural symbolism. It is concerned with performance or use, not as the natural result of some intended functionality but rather in the realm of behavior and uncontrollable consequences.
It explores more open-ended processes that value the experiential and the participatory and often blur the distinctions between production and consumption.
From Project to Product to [coalesce into a single] Process

5. Participants

St. Gallen based publisher TRAUMAWIEN and Berlin based Programmer Bernhard Bauch are well known for their award winning 2012 Project "Kindle'Voke Ghostwriters" (Migros Werkbeitrag 2012). They have a profound knowledge in progressive, artistic publishing tactics and their real-world impacts.