“If you are going to invite users to look at a video produced by Mediabistro you should say that they only get to see 5 minutes of it,” writes an anonymous complainant this morning, referring to the ads currently appearing on the site for the video from mediabistro.com’s recent publishing seminar. “Not to mention that it costs money to look at the entire video is shameful. It makes you look like a shill, an employee doing the Devil’s work—not an indepedent blogger.”
Personally, I would’ve thought that the little box outline around the ad in question would have suggested that it was, in fact, an ad rather than something I’d written, especially since it doesn’t say “posted by Ron” at the bottom, but I can see how a bleary-eyed reader on a Monday morning might make the mistake. And, actually, I suggested a while back to mediabistro.com, which owns this site, that it would be a good design move to further distinguish that adspace with a different background color, to prevent just this sort of confusion.
But, yes, when I tell you that mediabistro.com is offering the video from its “The Secrets of Book Publishing” panel discussion—nearly two hours of footage featuring Deborah Garrison, Daniel Menaker, and Sam Tanenhaus—I’ll mention before you click through that watching the entire video will cost you $20 (or just $15 if you’re an AvantGuild member), although there is a free five-minute preview. Like so.