Product placement in books

OK, I'll admit it. I lurk on Amazon. When I have time, I scroll through posts on the message boards to see what readers are talking about. Usually, it's not me. D'oh!

But there are lots of really interesting topics that pop up on the Amazon discussion boards, and one of them was product placement in romance novels.

Product placement is the deliberate mention of a type of product in the story in exchange for money. It's a sneaky form of advertising. The question on Amazon was whether authors get...