{"id":4230,"date":"2009-11-07T11:21:56","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T11:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/11\/07\/great-moments-in-targeted-adve\/"},"modified":"2009-11-07T11:21:56","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T11:21:56","slug":"great-moments-in-targeted-adve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/11\/07\/great-moments-in-targeted-adve\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Moments in Targeted Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"

We subscribe to Locus<\/cite><\/a>, the SF review and news magazine, and every month when it arrives, I flip through it quickly to look at the ads. This is a useful guide to what’s coming out from various publishers, but it’s also kind of fascinating to see how the different publishers market their stuff.<\/p>\n

In particular, it’s interesting to see how Baen pitches their books, because they are aimed with laser-like precision at people who aren’t me. I’m sure their ads work very well for their target audience, but they make their forthcoming books sound absolutely horrifying to me. This month’s ad may be the ultimate, featuring the following plug for a Tom Kratman book:<\/p>\n

\n

Undercover Infidels!<\/b><\/p>\n

Europe 2123. Dhimmitude– assigning second-class citizenship to non-Muslims– has dug its claws into the continent. Now a West Point grad must rescue a young girl sold into sexual slavery after her family could not pay the Christian Tax. U. S. Army vertean Tom Kratman notches up another controversial thriller!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If that didn’t scream “Run away!!!” loudly enough, there’s a glowing quote from Mark Steyn. I’m not sure it would be possible to construct a more appalling book ad.<\/p>\n

Oh, wait, I stand corrected: later in the same issue, there’s a plug for The Science Behind the Secret<\/cite>, featuring a quote from noted con man<\/s> tv psychic John Edward claiming that quantum mechanics is the basis for the “Law of Attraction.” This is also a Baen book, coming in March. And it pretty much guarantees that even if they publish something I might like (hey, it could happen), I’ll be getting it from the library, rather than giving them any of my beer money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We subscribe to Locus, the SF review and news magazine, and every month when it arrives, I flip through it quickly to look at the ads. This is a useful guide to what’s coming out from various publishers, but it’s also kind of fascinating to see how the different publishers market their stuff. In particular,… Continue reading Great Moments in Targeted Advertising<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}