Harlequin sets bosoms to heaving with self-publishing venture

Harlequin publishes more than 100 titles per month of its popular romance novels

Harlequin Enterprises, the world’s largest publisher in the category romance sector, raised eyebrows and ire when it announced a vanity press venture with Author Solutions. Initially titled Harlequin Horizons, the new business model would charge aspiring authors to print their books.  Customers would pay $599 to $1,599 for packages that would provide ISBN numbers, editing services, complimentary author copies, and for the highest priced package, their very own hardcover.

Quite a business model. After all, anyone can write a book, and anyone can write a romance. (This is sarcasm, by the way.) Ergo, it doesn’t take anything to write a good book, especially a romance. If Nora Roberts were dead, she’d be rolling in her grave right now.  As she isn’t, she has some pithy things to say about the matter (you may have to scroll to find her comments).

The marketing copy on the Harlequin Horizons page is very well done, and it focuses on the aspiring author who dreams of sitting by the ocean and writing her book longhand. (Seriously? Longhand?)

Harlequin has always known its customer and this product is no different. They’ve been selling fantasy for a long time; this is just a different kind.

So why the dust-up? Well, for one thing, vanity publishing is a good way to separate customers from their money. There is something especially cruel about treating aspiring writers this way. It’s actually very hard to write a book. By making it sound easy, and by marketing a shortcut, vanity presses such as this one prey on writers who may think they have published a very good book but instead have … not.

No sooner had Harlequin announced Harlequin Horizons, then the Romance Writers of America withdrew the publisher’s eligibility to attend its national convention for free. Additionally, its authors, even the ones who were not self-published by the company, would no longer be eligible for the Rita Award. Doesn’t seem like much, except that the RWA is exceedingly powerful, and Rita award-winning books often sell very well.

Then the Mystery Writers of America jumped in, and said it was also considering removing Harlequin from its list of approved publishers, in part because of Harlequin’s paid editing business called eHarlequin.

Harlequin has stepped back a bit, and has said it will change the name of the Horizons venture so it will not share the Harlequin name. Whether that will mollify critics remains to be seen.
So why did Harlequin go forward with this step? As a subsidiary of the ailing media company Torstar, and as part of an industry in which the prevailing business model has been under siege from new technology for quite some time, Harlequin is just one of many publishers that are trying different ways to make a profit and expand their customer base. They were probably quite surprised by the pushback from authors and the rest of the publishing community.

When it comes to romance, it’s just business.