Product placement in books?

I finished read my first Steven King book, Cell. I know that King is kind of a weird guy. I know hist other books and movies have been pretty wird. You would need a twisted mind to come up with some of these stories. But what really tweaked me about this book was blatant product placement. I have a hard time believing King was responsible for it, but it was distracting. Here are some examples:



Ok, so you tell me, are we trying to tell a story or sell products. Is this a book equivalent of a subliminal message? It just really looks bad. The story was alright, but all these ads just honestly pissed me off. I paid full price for the book just to find out the cost was offset by a whole bunch of strategically placed ads.

You know, I wonder, when editing the book, did the publisher look for opportunities to place products or was the story actually written with the product placement in mind?

Now, I could be wrong about this whole thing and it's just a "coincidence", but I doubt it.

Del.icio.us: books writing ads