Author’s got trouble over ‘You’ve Got Male’

Monday, March 20, 2000 | 9:25 a.m.

Madelene Sabol's book about Internet dating, "You've Got Male," may become a collector's item before it's ready for a second printing.

America Online is suing the author in federal court, claiming that her book's title infringes on its "You've Got Mail" logo, which is used to announce the arrival of e-mail for the service's subscribers.

If AOL wins, Sabol could be forced to re-title the self-published book, now available at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain.

But the first-time author doesn't think the Internet giant is going to win this David-and-Goliath battle being waged over a homonym.

"This is how I feel: If I had known this was going to be such a problem before I gave a title to the book I probably would have come up with a different name," the 35-year-old writer and online dater said recently from her home in Aurora, Colo. "But now I want to fight AOL for the little guy. I'm tired of big corporations bullying the little people."

Sabol will be at the Barnes & Noble store on North Rainbow Boulevard at 2 p.m. Saturday to sign copies of the $12.95 paperback.

Sabol said that when a federal judge last year threw out a similar suit filed by AOL against AT&T Inc. over the use of the phrase "You Have Mail," her case received a major boost.

However, AOL apparently doesn't see it that way.

"They called my lawyer and said 'You've Got Male' was a different issue than 'You Have Mail' and they began harassing me," Sabol said.

Her Colorado attorney and representatives of AOL did not return telephone calls for this story.

Sabol created a website at www.youve-got-male.com, but initially AOL blocked access, she said. "People called me and said they couldn't access me on AOL so I filed a restraining order against them and since then I have had no problems," she said.

She said that AOL, the largest Internet company in the world, is demanding that she turn over the book's title and her website domain. "They don't own the English language," the defiant writer said.

Sabol spent $10,000 to print 2,000 copies of the book in early July. "I got my first cease-and-desist letter from AOL on July 15," she said.

The first attorney Sabol tried to hire refused to take on the industry giant. "He said it was just too big," she said.

Several bookstores refused to carry the book because of AOL's allegations against Sabol. "Finally, Barnes & Noble noble picked it up," she said.

Sabol said she worked on the book for 3 1/2 years and because of publishing costs she's now "as broke as can be."

Amazon.com picked up the book, she said, and a few were sold that way, but the major sales didn't begin until Barnes & Noble agreed to carry it in December.

The book is geared toward women, covering the do's and don'ts of finding dates over the Internet, based on her many negative experiences.

She got the idea for the book after she divorced almost four years ago and met, on the Internet, a man with whom she communicated for four months before he flew her to Tampa, Fla. for a face-to-face meeting.

"When I got off the plane he looked at me and said 'You're too fat for me, you need to go home.' He didn't say hi or anything," Sabol said.

She was in an emotional dilemma. She still had strong feelings for the man, with whom she had carried on a lengthy cyber relationship, and so she spent the night with him.

The next morning he was just as insulting and Sabol flew home, adopted an Internet alias, and struck up a second cyber relationship with the same man, who ultimately bought her a second plane ticket for Tampa.

Sabol didn't have the heart to carry out the subterfuge with a second face-to-face encounter (she lost 50 pounds during the second courtship), but she exacted revenge by calling him on the phone, revealing to him that she was his former cyber girlfriend and told him she was pregnant, although she wasn't.

After exacting her bit of revenge over the non-pregnancy, Sabol decided to write the book and alert people to the pitfalls of Internet dating.

"From my research, 80 percent of the men on the Internet are alcoholics or cannot maintain a one-on-one personal relationship -- and you have to be careful of married men posing as single," Sabol said. "You have a 10 percent chance of meeting Mr. Right on the Internet. But if you go into a bar, you have the same statistic."

In addition to dating tips, the book includes a few steamy descriptions of successful encounters with a few men she met on the Internet.

"I made many friends," she said. "It's still my preferred method of meeting men. It's better than bars, if you're careful and use common sense."

During two years of research Sabol dated 67 men she met in cyberspace. But when the research ended, so did the dating marathon.

"I've subsided now," Sabol said.

She's too busy now to date as much, occupied with her national book-signing tour and working on her next writing project -- a film script based on the book. It's a movie Sabol might want to title "You Don't Have Male."