Alloy Media: Is It the Devil?
The more you read about Alloy Media, the ghostwriting agency that holds co-copyright to
How Opal Mehta.... , the more it sounds like a very, very bad thing.
As
this Boston Globe story shows, the firm considers books valuable only insofar as they lead to movie deals and product tie-ins.
More than books for reading, Alloy titles are content packages, with potential for advertising and cross-marketing. The Alloy website says, ''Advertisers have the opportunity to get their products or services cast in these best-selling books. The value of these mentions far exceeds the hundreds of thousands of readers, creating a viral product buzz." It is not known publicly whether Manolo Blahnik, Habitual jeans, or La Perla bras paid for their mentions in ''Opal Mehta."
Ugh.
And as
this New York Observer story shows, Alloy has a reputation for screwing the anonymous scribes who work for them.
All of which raises the question: Given that Alloy is a strong indicator that our culture is going to hell, does that make the firm a front for...
Satan?
