The Bookseller.com

4th July 2009

Penguin launches dating website

21.08.08

Penguin is launching a dating website aimed at book readers in conjunction with online dating giant Match.com. The service goes live this week and can be accessed via the Penguin home page and at www.penguindating.co.uk.

Penguin said the site would offer readers “a place to meet and indulge in the age-old art of writing love letters”. Members will be asked to write in their profile about the last book they read and will also be able to search through the site’s other profiles for mentions of their favourite book. Penguin authors including Julia Llewellyn and Adele Parks will write articles for the site, as will Match.com’s relationship expert Kate Taylor.

Penguin online marketing manager Anna Rafferty said the creation of the dating site was part of her overall mission to “develop meaningful relationships directly with readers”, fitting alongside initiatives such as teen site Spinebreakers, which has attacted 50,000 unique visitors, and Penguin’s 100,000-strong digital newsletter subscription list.

She added: “At Penguin we believe that the books we cherish and read over and over, those that we feel a deep emotional connection with, say something defining about us and the type of people we are.” Asked if soured romances could work against the brand, Rafferty said: “I really hope any romances are happy ones, but hopefully our readers are fully aware of what can go wrong as that’s the kind of thing our Penguin Classics are full of.”

Match.com international m.d. Jason Stockwood said that the US-owned business, which operates in 37 countries, had a number of other strategic partnerships, including providing dating services for MSN, Yahoo!, Vodafone and the Sun.

Readers will be able to sign up to the Penguin dating service for free, but must subscribe to contact other people on the site. They will also be able to access the profiles listed across Match.com’s wider database.

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