Much of Harlequin's website,, is dedicated to aspiring Harlequin authors.
Which is how it came to pass that I sent that letter to Ontario. Yet the company's most ingenious marketing device might be one that dates back to my teenage years: Unlike most publishers, Harlequin goes out of its way to encourage Harlequin readers to become Harlequin writers, urging them to master the form by devouring as many of the books as possible. Harlequin has kept pace with its readership, recognizing that it is far more diverse than the stereotypical homemaker. The only love Harlequin hasn't yet probed is the same-sex variety. The vampire-lover, in fact, is today's hottest hero, according to Romance Writers of America, though NASCAR drivers, a recent entry, also show promise. The Red Dress Ink imprint is basically chick lit (``Girls Night Out," the much anticipated sequel to ``Girls Night In") Spice gets kinky (``Tease" is a ride into the ``dark heart of the most breathtakingly erotic S&M club in Manhattan") Steeple Hill keeps it pure with Christian love stories and Luna represents dark otherworldly forces. In the `80s, the prototypical hero was a playboy, ripe for the reformative power of love today, there's a prototype to suit all tastes. ``The novels have changed enormously in 20 years." ``Read what Harlequin is publishing today," Gayle Wilson, the president of the Romance Writers of America, told me recently. Yet Harlequin, ever savvy when it comes to marketing its product, has changed its approach. Readers, it seems, were ready for more complex story lines, and they were willing to follow their favorite writers like Catherine Coulter and LaVyrle Spencer to the hardcover stands. A decade later, however, Harlequin began losing readers to single titles-books that come out in hardcover first and have a longer shelf life. The heyday of the category romance was in the `80s, when I did the bulk of my Harlequin reading. (The reason, the researchers postulated: an active fantasy life.) Nearly half of romance readers are college graduates, according to Romance Writers of America, a trade group, and they have sex 74 percent more often than their nonromance-reading counterparts, according to a study reported in Psychology Today. It was Harlequin that came up with the strategy of selling their books in drugstores and supermarkets, where they could twirl around on stands, their distinctive covers (white, with the clinch framed in an oval) catching the attention of homemakers in need of an escape.īut the Harlequin readership has never quite fit its desperate housewife stereotype. Harlequin has long dominated what insiders call the category romance-a paperback meant to last on bookstands and in book club circulars for a month before being replaced by another paperback with different names, different places, and a very similar plot. Based in Don Mills, Ontario, Harlequin Enterprises got its start in the romance industry in 1957, reprinting Mills & Boon novels, but it was so successful it eventually took over its British counterpart. When I'd run through my cousin's stash of Mills & Boon, I helped myself to her growing collection of Harlequins.
It wasn't long before I ditched Nancy Drew and Louisa May Alcott.
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I first discovered them when an older cousin arrived from England, bringing with her a handful of Mills & Boon books full of brooding men and windswept women locked in what's known in the industry as ``the clinch." I had started reading trashy novels when I was 9, and I didn't stop until my mid-20s. Though it made me cringe, I couldn't help but read to the bottom, where I concluded with the declaration, ``I am and will remain an avid reader." It was dated July 6, 1989, making me 16 when I wrote it. ``I am a young writer interested in having Harlequin Presents publish a novel I have recently completed," the letter began. Gina, by George Albert Glay, was released three times by Harlequin as #19, #112, and #287 in the series.AT HOME FOR MY PARENTS' 40th wedding anniversary not long ago, I came across a yellowing manuscript and a faded letter in a dusty storage room. There have been several reprints given new numerical releases, despite containing the same text.
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#391, titled How To Get More From Your Car, is a book for car owners. #186, titled Why Be A Sucker?, is a book for investment in Canada. Ryberg, is another example of a Harlequin book that is not a novel, but is, instead, a woman's health book.
Harlequin #162, titled Health, Sex And Birth Control by Percy E. #71, titled Bouquet Knitter's Guide, is another early example of Harlequin publishing a non-romance title under their Harlequin Romance brand. The list includes more unusual publications, such as The Pocket Purity Cook Book and Livre de cuisine Purity: petit format, which featured Purity Flour Mills publications in a smaller size.