iTurf's gURL.com Launches New Book, "Deal With It!"
Leverages Content From iTurf's Award-Winning Website gURL.com
-- Comprehensive Resource For Teen Girls and Young Women -- -- Debuts Among Top 50 On Amazon.com's 100 Hot Books --
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 1999-- iTurf Inc. (Nasdaq:TURF - news), a leading provider of Internet community, content and commerce services for Generation Y, today announced that Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, has published ''Deal With It!: A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain and Life as a gURL.'' Written by Esther Drill, Heather McDonald and Rebecca Odes, the creators of iTurf's gURL.com website, the book is a no- nonsense, hands-on resource designed to help mature teens and young women to learn about their bodies, their sexuality, their psyches and their lives. In conjunction with the book, iTurf has launched a promotional website at www.dealwithit.com.
''Deal With It!'' is a product of several years of research garnered through the authors' experience with teens as the principals behind the award-winning, interactive website gURL.com. Founded by the authors in 1996, gURL.com was launched to positively address the highly individual, yet universal, experience of teenage girls. Since its launch, gURL.com has risen to national prominence and has spawned an online community where teenage girls interact and express their questions and concerns. With 831,000 unique visitors in July, gURL.com is the largest website focused exclusively on teen girls, reaching 9.4% of females between the ages of 12 and 17, according to Media Metrix, an Internet audience measurement firm.
Esther Drill, Executive Editor of gURL.com and co-author of ''Deal With It!,'' said, ''We are very excited to begin offering 'Deal With It!' to teenage girls. Our book is a landmark event in the evolution of the gURL brand and site. The book, like the site, reflects the kind of information and support we craved during our own adolescence and fulfills a long unmet need for a book that reflects the realities of growing up as a girl today. Our approach is to deal with relevant issues head-on providing our users with information in non-judgmental and humorous ways. Our goal is to lay out options and resources that enable our readers to make decisions for themselves. 'Deal With It!' takes the gURL mission to a new level and a new media.''
Kathryn Briggs Gordon, a spokesperson for Pocket Books, said, '''Deal With It!' reflects the authors' innate ability to understand and address the concerns of today's teen girls and young women. Offering a different approach to the experience of being a teen, it discusses subjects such as safe sex, pregnancy, body image, self-destructive behavior, and sexual preference in a non-judgmental, personal way. Hundreds of excerpts from real- girl conversations on the gURL.com website remind teens that whatever they're going through, they're not alone.''
''Deal With It!'' debuted yesterday among the top 50 books on Amazon.com's 100 Hot Books, and has met with significant praise. Kim Jack Riley, editor-in-chief of Planned Parenthood's web magazine for teenagers, teenwire.com, said, ''This book is a must read for every girl in America.''
Publishers Weekly stated: ''Following a recent trend, Web gurus Drill, McDonald and Odes have translated their highly popular website, gURL.com, into print, taking a holistic approach to those perennial teen concerns: changing bodies, emotions, desires and lives. In addition to the authors' valuable commentary, a good deal of the text is made up of outtakes from the site, revealing a thoughtful and supportive cyber-community able to respond unflinchingly to the many issues covered.''
gURL.com is a part of the iTurf network of websites. iTurf Inc. is a leading online destination focused on consumers between the ages of 10 and 24. Through its network of websites, iTurf provides a complete offering of community, content and commerce services which include: interactive magazines, proprietary content, chat rooms, posting boards, personal homepages, e-mail, and online shopping. In addition to gURL.com, the iTurf network of websites includes OnTap.com, dELiAs.cOm, discountdomain.com, droog.com, TSISoccer.com, contentsonline.com, dotdotdash.com and StorybookHeirlooms.com. iTurf is a subsidiary of dELiA*s Inc. (Nasdaq: DLIA - news).
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster, the publishing operation of Viacom, Inc.
''Deal With It!'' is for sale online at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, dELiAs.cOm and gURL.com, as well as at bookstores such as Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Waldenbooks, and through the dELiA*s catalog.
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