A Terrible Way to Get Ads Rolling

A Russian fiction magazine that plans to publish a Beverly Hills writer’s spicy novel about the love life of Ivan the Terrible has launched a campaign to attract Western ads.

Valeri Ganichev, publisher of Roman-Gazeta, said its 2.4 million readers in Russia and other former Soviet republics are a vast, untapped consumer market.

Roman-Gazeta will charge $12,500 for a full-page four-color layout. Likely buyers are U.S. soft drink and high-tech companies, said GPR International Co., which will solicit ads.

Ganichev said Roman-Gazeta has contracted to publish its first original work by a non-Russian, a romance novel by Deborah Sherwood of Beverly Hills on the early love life of Ivan the Terrible, who ruled Russia from 1547 until his death in 1584.