This Bookstore Has Got Clickbait Right. Here's How

New Delhi: Don't you just hate clickbait-y headlines? So do we. But a bookstore in Texas made a noble use of clickbait to get people to read more. Dallas bookshop 'The Wild Detectives' came up with Litbaits. The store introduced Litbaits on their Facebook page that used clickbait headlines to redirect users to the online versions of classic books. All for a good cause.

The initiative was launched last year in September and delivered positive results for the store. According to their page, they saw a 150% increase in engagement on their Facebook posts and a 14,000% increase in traffic to their website.

Here are some of the examples of the clickbait headlines used:

Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
 
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
 
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
 
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
 
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
 
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
 
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
Literary reading has been on a steady decline. The percentage of Americans who read literature was the lowest in three decades in 2015. At a time where people barely read, getting them to read classics is quite a challenge and this bookstore did well.