The data lane is narrower than the outlet list. Reference tools are the way in.
We mapped writers and recent articles on love, sex, dating and romance books, then generated and paired ideas against them. The main finding is a correction: most "on-beat" writers we opened write celebrity news, advice and lists, not data. Data gets picked up in a smaller lane: Wired, Cosmopolitan's sex and relationships desks, Slate, and book-trade and romance-newsletter press. For an adult-fiction brand, neutral reference tools (an age-verification map, a spice scale, a policy table) are the assets those outlets can cite without endorsing the product. Every idea here is a hypothesis: nothing has been pitched, built or benchmarked.
Three kinds of statement on this page
Everything is labelled so nobody pitches a guess as a finding.
Measured or counted
Row counts in the writer and article files, articles per outlet, referring-domain counts for comparable pages, search volumes, propagation counts (11 stories, 272 pages). Real numbers, but each has its own limits, noted where it appears.
Untested claims
Every idea's headline claim and every statistic inside one (for example "42% of fatigued women..."). Idea Genome scores (0 to 1) rank ideas within this batch only and are not validated against real pickup.
Analyst calls
Brand-safety tags, outlet pairings, build effort, the recommended first five, and the theme tags on this page. Informed by the evidence, not proven by it.
Who covers this, and who will take what
Eleven outlet groups carry a brand-safety tag from the merged Idea Pool document. Below them are the next 30 highest-volume domains in the article file, untagged, so you can see where the volume actually sits.
Top 20 domains by article count
Article file, . Syndication hubs and UK outlets inflate the top of the list.
Articles per month
Same file.
| Outlet | Category | Tag | Beats / what they run | Best asset type | Articles on file | Writers on file | Writers citing a study | Fit notes and an example study cited |
|---|
Counts are my own tallies of the article file (3,305 rows) and writer file (2,283 rows), matched by domain. "Writers citing a study" counts writers whose recent articles cite at least one study (the file's study-coverage field). Across the whole writer file, .
Formats and paths that travel
From the propagation study: 11 comparable stories, 272 public pages and mentions, 260 observed connections (151 with strong link or citation signals). Confidence: medium. These are planning signals, not proof of cause.
Bounded data report, several cuts
The best propagation bet: a bounded data report with several pitchable cuts, one comparison table a reporter can scan in ten seconds, a plain methodology note and a downloadable table.
Model to copy: Circana BookScan
"US romance print sales up 24% H1 2025, dark romance growing" (Publishing Perspectives) is the best transferable model, with direct citation from selfpublishingadvice.org and accio.com.
Four launch shapes
Audit or testing study, decision guide or explainer, benchmark or index, survey or audience-gap study. The survey shape is out of scope for this client brief.
Data types that get cited
Sales and market data (Circana, WordsRated, author-money.com), critical re-analysis of industry claims (Shelf Love on "romance is a billion-dollar industry"), and monthly bestseller analysis (Romancing the Data).
Angles that travel
Named subjects and measurable findings. Lead with the human or practical consequence, use expert or policy context as proof. Do not imitate institutional authority.
Bridge layer
The evidence clusters around community and social platforms and mainstream news. Repeated bridge domains: grokipedia.com, shelflovepodcast.substack.com, author-money.com, statista.com, accio.com, blog.romancingthedata.com, nypost.com.
Domains that spread the studied stories
Amplifying-outlets file (141 domains). Bars show strong coverage-path signals; label shows how many of the 11 stories each domain covered. Most are "other publishers"; only 3 of 141 are classed mainstream news.
Eight topics flagged as early signals
From Trend Scout (Nov 1). All eight are marked "Investigate" and "Early signal": momentum in discourse, but search demand is negligible or unverified for each. Treat them as timing inputs, not traffic guarantees. Plus 32 watchlist items.
Watchlist items with real search numbers
Six-month change in monthly US searches, from the Trend Scout watchlist.
Every idea in one place
All 77 Idea Genome ideas, the 13 interactive concepts, and 3 ideas that appear only in the merged doc. Cards marked "In merged doc" are among its 21 no-survey ideas and carry its outlet pairing. Tap the star to add an idea to your shortlist.
Scores come from Idea Genome (0 to 1, within this batch). Interactive Tool Builder concepts and merged-doc-only ideas have no Idea Genome score, so "score" sorting places them after scored ideas. Theme tags and the "May name products" and "Needs official-stats pull" flags were assigned for this page by keyword match on each idea's text; check before relying on them.
The link-magnet concepts
Thirteen concepts in the Interactive Tool Builder specs (8 initial, 5 expansion), grouped into 10 numbered items in the merged doc. The case for them: in adult fiction, links go to product pages, and nobody owns a citable reference page.
Build a shortlist
The recommended first five are pre-starred as eight cards: the Spice Scale pick bundles the Scale and the Converter, and the Trope pick bundles Trope DNA with Trope Collider, which the merged doc treats as one build with the Trope Mash-Up Machine. Star or unstar anything in the idea explorer. Nothing is saved when you close the page, so copy your list before you leave.
Your shortlist
Mix of your shortlist
By effort
By type
Flags in the shortlist
Decide these before anyone builds
Competitor naming
The client profile says not to name competitors in client-facing copy. Five ideas need named products to work: the AI content-policy matrix (Will It Write It?), the Romance Prompt Refusal Checker, the AI companion cost calculator, the Spice Tax and the Digital Intimacy Index. Option in the merged doc: host them on a neutral page. The Digital Intimacy Index also self-ranks a category Metime competes in.
Privacy: the Fantasy Index
Built on anonymized first-party request data. The profile says stories are private and never shown to others. Aggregate counts only, and only after a legal and privacy review.
Data gaps
Official pulls failed on the themes we need. Of six requested series, only US total households came back usable (120,756,048 in 2019 to 127,482,865 in 2023). Each Census, CDC or BLS idea needs its own data pull before it is promised. The US-figures research brief landed but was never opened, so no figure from it is used. The dataset shortlist found 13 leads with 1 ready, and that one is a 2011 EU reading table.
Outlet tags come from a sample
Tags rest on 12 opened writer rows out of 2,282. The biggest unknown: does the "data-averse celebrity outlet" pattern hold across the rest? If it does, the data lane stays narrow and quizzes carry most of the outlet count.
Ideas are hypotheses
Claims such as "42% of fatigued women", "38% of US counties" or the Ledger's "$1.8M" are untested. Scores are internal ranks. Interactive link evidence is directional, with no live benchmarks.
UK-heavy counts
Legal accuracy: age-verification map
Flagged in the merged doc and the executive summary: state-by-state law claims need a legal read before publishing, and the table must be refreshed on a schedule.
No contacts yet
Zero of the 2,283 writer records carry an email address. This is a mapped list, not an outreach-ready one.
What this run did not include
Not done
- Pitching or pitch lists
- Contact enrichment (no emails on file)
- Idea stress-testing or external ranking
- Copy for any asset
- Builds of any tool or page
Done, with limits
- Newsletter search ran but saved no file
- Official-statistics pull mostly empty
- Research brief substituted, never opened
- Outlet tagging on a 12-row sample
Parked
Survey-dependent ideas (the merged doc says 7 and names 6): The 90-Day Burnout, Romance Trope Network Map, Fantasy Partner Real-Life Dealbreaker, The Secret Bookshelf, Book Boyfriends vs. Bad Dates, Can You Judge a Spicy Book by Its Cover. The Trope DNA quiz and Fantasy Index could later supply some of that reader data.
Suggested next steps
From the executive summary. Tick as you go; ticks are not saved.
Sources behind this page
| File | What it gave this page |
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Dataset shortlist (13 leads)
From the Data Scout shortlist. Licence shown where the file records one; otherwise terms not checked.
| Lead | Verdict | Scope | Dataset | Publisher | Licence | Note |
|---|