There are two kinds of people in the world

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand the binary system and those who don’t.</ rimshot> I never get tired of that joke. Wish I knew who wrote it.

Yesterday, advertising for peanuts posted a link to a marketing site for a new book. I thought the site was cool, but more to the point, I thought that other people involved in publishing would be interested in it as an example of what I assume is effective marketing. It’s certainly different from the typical one-book promotional site, many of which are churned out based on standard templates.

So I posted the link on a mailing list for small publishers.

Responses did not fall along a bell curve, as one might expect. People either love the site or they detest it; nobody is on the fence about it. The ones who hate the site can’t even see themselves making a business decision in support of a book that would lead to such a quirky and creative site.

So I’ve concluded that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who love the site and those who hate it; but I have no idea what the difference between those two groups means in terms of personality, politics, or psychological makeup. In other words, this would be a great screening test for pollsters and psychologists, if only we knew what it was measuring.