LOS ANGELES - The ABC television network and sister publishing label Hyperion Books are taking the concept of product placement into a new direction — by turning an imaginary product into a real one.
Producers of ABC’s mega-hit castaway thriller “Lost” plan to introduce a new storyline centering on the discovery of a fictitious manuscript that will become the basis for a real-life novel that Hyperion will publish this spring.
The book will then be promoted as the work of an author, named Gary Troup, who supposedly delivered the manuscript to Hyperion days before perishing in the show’s stage-setting event, a plane crash that maroons a group of survivors on a spooky island.
