SBD - Homage to Harlequin Enterprises
Apr. 24th, 2006 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksIt's Smart Bitches Monday. Beth hasn't posted a reminder, but I'm going to post anyway. [Edited to add: Beth's call for bitchery has since been made.] Last week or the week before, Bookseller Chick wrote an excellent post about publisher branding, which got me thinking about whether/how romance publishers divide their authors by imprint, and what sorts of reputations different imprints earn. For instance, Avon publishes European historicals out the wazoo; Dorchester seems a little more willing to take risks with paranormal stuff; Leisure seems to have more American-set historicals; etc. But beyond that, how do publishers reach out to potential readers? This got me thinking about that monolith of romance publishing, Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
I think Harlequin gets a lot of abuse from romance readers and non-readers, including me, often. But you've got to give Hqn credit -- it filled a niche in the market that most publishers ignored until relatively recently, and its imprints offer a fairly diverse group of books every month. Now that other publishers are rushing to meet market demand, Hqn is still hanging in there. Yes, they were stuck in the past when it came to some recent trends (paranormals and erotica). They are hurrying to catch up because they were/are too reliant on the aging model of the romance reader. Yes, they publish too many virgin sheikh secret baby millionaire books. But they are also publishing a lot of other stuff in an effort to reach other segments of the market. It's just that the category/series books are so easily identifiable as Harlequin products that sometimes we readers forget that they do other stuff.
Under the Mira imprint, Harlequin Enterprises releases romantic suspense, contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and mystery-lite romance. Under the Red Dress Ink imprint, Hqn is publishing chick lit and hen lit. Through the Next line, women's fiction. Via Luna, science fiction/fantasy. They've even got manga out now, in an effort to reach much younger readers -- they have a pink line for under 12/13 and purple for over 12/13. [Hah! Purple for older? Purple for prose? Sorry, couldn't resist.] The newest line is called Spice, and is erotica. Kimani Press is now the home of Arabesque and two other Black/African America romance lines. Inspirational fiction is published through Steeple Hill
Harlequin publishes around the world -- according to their website in 95 international markets (I'm assuming that this means 95 countries, but who knows) and 27 languages.
A bunch of authors who appear on NYT best seller lists got their start with Harlequin/Silhouette. Nora Roberts. Suzanne Brockmann. Lynn Erickson. Elizabeth Lowell. Stephanie Laurens. Barbara Samuels/Ruth Wind. Other respected genre writers write today for one of their imprints: Catherine Asaro, Mercedes Lackey, Laura Resnick, Roberta Gellis.
However stagnant I think Harlequin may be when I look at the category releases each month, it isn't as stodgy as it used to be. [Seriously, check out SB Sarah's review of Gail Dayton's The Compass Rose, which has polyamory. In a Harlequin. A Luna book, but still, published by Harlequin!] And it has done good things, in terms of satisfying a demand that wasn't getting satisfied by any other publishers . . . until those publishers woke up to the vast amount of profits they were ignoring by ignoring the romance market. I need to remember that the next time I am ready to roll my eyes over yet another Cowboy SEAL's secret baby plot in the display rack at the bookstore.
I think Harlequin gets a lot of abuse from romance readers and non-readers, including me, often. But you've got to give Hqn credit -- it filled a niche in the market that most publishers ignored until relatively recently, and its imprints offer a fairly diverse group of books every month. Now that other publishers are rushing to meet market demand, Hqn is still hanging in there. Yes, they were stuck in the past when it came to some recent trends (paranormals and erotica). They are hurrying to catch up because they were/are too reliant on the aging model of the romance reader. Yes, they publish too many virgin sheikh secret baby millionaire books. But they are also publishing a lot of other stuff in an effort to reach other segments of the market. It's just that the category/series books are so easily identifiable as Harlequin products that sometimes we readers forget that they do other stuff.
Under the Mira imprint, Harlequin Enterprises releases romantic suspense, contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and mystery-lite romance. Under the Red Dress Ink imprint, Hqn is publishing chick lit and hen lit. Through the Next line, women's fiction. Via Luna, science fiction/fantasy. They've even got manga out now, in an effort to reach much younger readers -- they have a pink line for under 12/13 and purple for over 12/13. [Hah! Purple for older? Purple for prose? Sorry, couldn't resist.] The newest line is called Spice, and is erotica. Kimani Press is now the home of Arabesque and two other Black/African America romance lines. Inspirational fiction is published through Steeple Hill
Harlequin publishes around the world -- according to their website in 95 international markets (I'm assuming that this means 95 countries, but who knows) and 27 languages.
A bunch of authors who appear on NYT best seller lists got their start with Harlequin/Silhouette. Nora Roberts. Suzanne Brockmann. Lynn Erickson. Elizabeth Lowell. Stephanie Laurens. Barbara Samuels/Ruth Wind. Other respected genre writers write today for one of their imprints: Catherine Asaro, Mercedes Lackey, Laura Resnick, Roberta Gellis.
However stagnant I think Harlequin may be when I look at the category releases each month, it isn't as stodgy as it used to be. [Seriously, check out SB Sarah's review of Gail Dayton's The Compass Rose, which has polyamory. In a Harlequin. A Luna book, but still, published by Harlequin!] And it has done good things, in terms of satisfying a demand that wasn't getting satisfied by any other publishers . . . until those publishers woke up to the vast amount of profits they were ignoring by ignoring the romance market. I need to remember that the next time I am ready to roll my eyes over yet another Cowboy SEAL's secret baby plot in the display rack at the bookstore.
