I just thought about it, not sure why, but I did. I’ll admit, I don’t watch the channels most people do, but even on Cartoon Network I’m surprised I’ve never seen so much as a Harry Potter commercial. And come to think of it, quite surprised that at the very least Discovery or History never plugged an Encyclopedia or book on WWII or something.
I’ve seen plenty of commercials aimed at getting kids to learn to read or telling them appreciate books. I may have seen one or two commercials plugging products like Colbert’s or Stewart’s books on their networks (though I’m not sure if that was only on their show or not, I don’t recall seeing straight commercials on CC but I could be wrong). But I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a commercial for a novel or non-fiction work in recent memory. I may have seen one or two Scholastic Book Club commercials way back when (like, mid '90s), but I could be imagining those. But even that wouldn’t be plugging a book so much as a service/series.
Are there any you can think of? And no, “how to make money fast!” schemes don’t count as “books” for purposes of this discussion. I’m entirely willing to accept that I simply watch the wrong channels.
Yes I have actually! I was very surprised by it. I haven’t seen it recently, but I saw it multiple times a month or two back.
It was not a children’s book, not a Colbert/Stewart book, and not a Trudeau-esque scam book. The commercial had the book floating in front of a mountain landscape or some such.
I had never heard of the author, which added to my surprise. “Hm, some guy I’ve never heard of has a commercial for a normal book. That’s pretty cool.”
Sorry I couldn’t remember anything specific at all, I don’t pay the best of attention to commercials.
The only one I’ve seen lately was a blip- maybe 10 seconds if that- at the end of a TV show (one of those “show credits are rolling in a small box in the corner” things) announcing Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol.
Scientology used to air ads for Dianetics but I haven’t seen any lately. (The Mormons and other religious groups occasionally advertise but I’m assuming you’re not referring to religious books.)
I know I’ve seen book commercials but they’re very rare. The reason is probably money; the price of a 30 second ad even on cable would make a huge dent in or exceed the advertising budget of most books from authors who aren’t well known while authors who are well known probably don’t need the exposure.
The Lost Symbol is the book I was talking about! Dan Brown sounds familiar to my sleep deprived brain. Probably done something super famous and that I own a copy of.
EDIT: The commercials I’ve seen for it were longer than 10-second blips though. They were true commercials during a normal commercial break.
There have been ads for books on TV for decades. They are generally airport-style page-turners, but they’re generally by established “names” in the field. They seem to be 30 second spots.
I recall in particular that Sidney Sheldon’s the Other Side of Midnight was advertised on TV right after midnight on New Year’s Eve (clever, huh?). This was clearly after the 1973 release, and before the 1977 movie, so that pegs that they’ve been doing this for at least 35 years.
Yeah, that’s all I’ve ever seen. Mostly they’re for James Patterson books like Kiss the Girls and whathaveyou. I may have seen ads for Ed McBain or Patricia Cornwell, but I don’t know for sure if they were on TV.
ETA: I think I remember TV commercials for Stephen King’s Duma Key.
I was going to mention Dianetics. There are also the occasional late night “But wait! That’s not all!” commercials. Time/Life occasionally has these, and I came this --> <-- close to ordering a series of history books from them once.
Haven’t I occasionally seen ads for cookbooks? I’m not sure.
Yeah, here in the UK each time James Patterson has a new pulp novel out we get bombarded with ads for it on the main TV channels, complete with hokey dramatizations of the plotline.
It surprised me because I hadn’t seen this kind of marketing for novels before.
I remember the Dianetics TV ads from the Eighties, too, and an ad for some potboiler romance/thriller - Jacqueline Susann, maybe? - from around the same time. Otherwise none.
There are a lot of ads for various James Patterson books, and some female author whose name escapes me at the moment. They only started within the last few years, though.
There have been a bunch of ads for Patterson’s books. Since Patterson himself appears in most of the ads, he has an unusual voice, and they usually have titles based on nursery rhymes, I used to parody Patterson’s voice: “This is James Patterson, with my newest thriller Hickory Dickory Dock.”
That might be the ad for Dianetics, since the cover depicts a volcano.