Yatterings

The Horn Book blog has a story on the use of product placement in books. Susan Katz, the publisher of Harper Collins children’s books comments in the New York Times:

“If you look at Web sites, general media or television, corporate sponsorship or some sort of advertising is totally embedded in the world that tweens live in,” Ms. Katz said. “It gives us another opportunity for authenticity.”

It feels like a Scott Westerfeld world gone entirely mad with advertising and I really hope its  a short lived fad (not too short, in my view, if it went away yesterday) . It smacks of bottom lines rather than trying to produce decent reading material.

Sigh.