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Love-seekers to use ads in e-books someday?
June 26, 2009 | 10:13 am
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By David Rothman
Will this apply to classified ads in e-books someday? Simon Owens of the the Bloggasm blog writes in:
“I remember reading your post the other day mentioning that Craigslist has closed down its adult services ad section. I wanted to test the effectiveness of its dating classifieds system, and so created a series of fake ads in multiple cities and tallied the amount and quality of the response.”
Among Simon’s results? At finding mates for sex, romance, whatever, female advertisers have it much easier than males do. The straight women in Washington, D.C.—well, the ones he invented—averaged 20 replies per ad while the men drew just nine. Fifty-five percent of the imaginary women reeled in ads with pictures, within a day or so. But only 11 percent of the men did. Could women, as some suggest, be more cautious about online contacts?
The e-book angle
So what’s the solution? Perhaps it’s time for a brand name like Harlequin to screen love-related advertisers and let men run ads in novels for predominantly female readerships. The technology even exists to target classifieds at specific geographical areas. What do you think, Malle? Similarly, women could run ads in male-oriented SF or shoot-‘em-up novels from other publishers.
At a more lofty level, what if the literary world were less snobbish toward ads in books? Could a Pushkin poetry collection be just the place for women to advertise for sensitive, well-read lovers.
Embed
Separately, Simon ran an interesting little tidbit about Reuters letting people embed news items with advertising in blogs. Trouble is, it’s a hassle to go through all of Reuters’ steps, and your items may vanish after a month. Hey, Reuters, keep trying.
Related: Finding Romance Online, in the Washington Times—about romance novels. Subhead reads, “Steamy stories, the privacy of a Kindle; together they make genre sales superhot."
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Comments:
Actually, finding “love” on your iPhone just got a bit easier…both mobile.ereader.com and Booksonboard.com (via Stanza) are running The Harlequin Love Cafe – a little animation that jiggles and steams and points readers to “Sweet” “Hot” and “Dark” Harlequin titles. (non iPhone users will find the animation on the Powells.com ebooks page)
For your theory to work, men could post their ads under the appropriate category and women could search and pick based on their preference to different types of romances they read.
Seriously, David, there’s a germ of an idea in there somewhere, marrying (so to speak) social media with the fluidity of online books. Something to work on for summer!
Appreciated the additional info, Mia. Yes, I didn’t mean this entirely in jest. Hey, if women want romance for real, why not advertise where the right kind of men will see the classifieds? Far more effective than just chatting with other women.
No discrimination, btw. Different kinds of GLBT books could offer get-together features, with the advertisers free to select the kind of book in which the classifieds would appear.
Thanks,
David
Penguin UK, I recall did something of the sort last year – can you use your journalistic skills to find out how that worked out for them? I think it was a BB.
Though your version would include IM capability, yes?
Wish granted, Mia. See “Penguin’s dating site: http://snurl.com/kxyvg ” – thanks to Mike Cane. Apparently it’s at least successful enough to be continued.
David
Thanks guys! Though the P site is maybe a little too service-y. Your original idea was to match people through fiction preferences, and that’s the one to run with, I think….