According to a recent survey, 62% of women would rather spend Friday night reading a good book than out on a date, and the similarities between how people talk about both reading and dating is fascinating. Given these similarities, and with the success of popular dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Match, Grindr, and eHarmony, Brant Menswar and Jim Knight, the founders of digital book marketing company BookstarPR, decided to revolutionize the world of book discovery with the new app Booky Call.
“Booky Call is an innovative book discovery platform cleverly disguised as a dating app. By combining the proven psychology of dating apps with the innovative approach of giving books a humanized dating profile, we have created a book discovery platform that helps readers engage with books in a completely new way,” the Booky Call website states.
Booky Call uses the same technology as popular dating apps to match its users with potential book “dates.” When first setting up the app, users answer questions about their preferences in different genres and categories. Then, much like the technology used on Tinder, users can swipe right or left on each book profile, indicating their interest or disinterest in each book, and the more you swipe, the better Boo, the app’s matchmaker, learns your interests and tastes.
On the app, each book gets a humanized dating profile with a unique bio and first-person perspective answers to nine questions that come directly from dating profiles, such as “Who should swipe right on me?”, “What do I spend a lot of time thinking about?” and “What will we eat/drink on our first date?” Each profile also contains a brief snippet of the book in question.
Once a reader and book match, the app “slides into your DMs” and provides options for acquiring the book in physical, digital, or audiobook formats. A couple times a week, the app even sends a, “U up?” text highlighting a few potential book matches, mirroring booty call texts you might get from a dating app.
“Our proprietary algorithm delivers individualized book recommendations from a curated library based solely on user preferences. Our unique book ‘dating profiles’ employ the same psychology as the most popular dating apps. Our gamification platform increases engagement and drives frequency of book sales. Our integrated promotion system spotlights undiscovered books to deepen the connection between authors and readers,” the Booky Call website explains.
According to its founders, another thing that makes Booky Call particularly special is that it doesn’t contain ads or reviews from strangers, so it isn’t plagued by “review bombing” like other book discovery platforms. Additionally, the app aims to support local independent bookstores through the use of bookshop.org.
With thousands of books to choose from in almost every category imaginable, there’s something for everyone on Booky Call, whether you read all the time or only once in a while.
Writing and Listening — an Interview with Brooke Randel
As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.” What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman’s harrowing survival, and another’s struggle to excavate theRead more…