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Attention English majors, minors, faculty, and staff!

Have you written any insightful critical essays of late? How about poems, stories, plays, articles, or pieces of creative nonfiction? Here's your chance to share them with your fellow word connoisseurs! The Word wants to display students' and faculty members' original work on the "Articles" page. If you'd like to submit a piece, send an electronic copy to Krista Hebel (hebelkl@uwec.edu).

Articles:

Fabio and the Bodice-Rippers - Christina Huber

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Fabio and the Bodice-Rippers:

A Look at Harlequin Enterprises Limited

by Christina Huber

Posted March 15, 2008

Critics have declared that the romance novel is dying. They imply that today’s educated, empowered women no longer need happily- ever-after endings and exotic tales of love and lust. However, if this is true, then someone must have forgotten to tell the modern woman. According to an August 2006 article in Writer’s Digest, women buy eighty of all fiction books sold in The United States, and, studies show, women are buying romance novels. In 2000, more than forty percent of all paperback novels purchased were romances, and Harlequin Enterprises Limited, one of the world’s largest fiction publishers, controls eighty-five percent of this niche market. Harlequin Enterprises Limited, commonly known in America simply as Harlequin, has been a staple producer of romance novels for nearly fifty years. This publishing house, which produced over one thousand new titles in 2001, has had a huge impact on the publishing industry and popular culture for over half a century.
           

Although Harlequin is a household name in most parts of North America, there was a time when the Canadian-run publishing house was little more than a small reprint company. In 1949, Richard and Mary Bonnycastle, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, bought the rights to several out-of-print books and began to republish them. Harlequin’s first book, Nancy Bruff’s The Manatee, sold for fifty cents per copy. From the beginning, the company’s most profitable reprints were romance novels, and after a few years Mary Bonnycastle suggested that Harlequin focus solely on that genre. The decision paid off, and the company expanded rapidly, eventually relocating to Toronto in 1969.
           

In 1971 Harlequin bought Mills and Boon, an established publishing company, and began to turn out its own supply of new romances. During this time of widespread growth, Richard Bonnycastle appointed Lawrence Heisey as president of Harlequin. Heisey is credited with implementing the brilliant marketing strategy of bringing paperback books into the stores women frequent. By the time Torstar bought Harlequin in 1975, the company’s romances were everywhere. Women could buy them in supermarkets, drugstores, and bookstores, and in one promotion, Harlequin romances were even packaged with Kotex feminine napkins. It was during this time of mass advertising that the novels themselves were standardized into the formulaic romances Harlequin is now known for. Books had to be exactly 192 pages, and the predominantly female authors were forced to write under pennames. By the end of the 1970’s Harlequin accounted for nearly ten percent of all paperback sales in North America.          
           

With the start of the 1980s and a renewal of the women’s movement, Harlequin was expected to see a large decrease in sales. However, as books became racier, the romance genre continued to grow. Several new divisions, including the sexy Temptation line and a series of romantic suspense novels, were released in the early 1980’s. In 1985 Harlequin acquired Silhouette Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, one of their biggest rivals. Silhouette remains a profitable imprint of Harlequin Enterprises to this day. By 1986, Harlequin romances had been translated into fifteen languages and were being sold in ninety-nine countries across the globe. That same year one of Harlequin’s more profitable titles, Love with a Perfect Stranger, was made into a Showtime movie.
           

The 1990s were a time of globalization for the publishing giant. Harlequin teamed with several established companies in Europe in order to more effectively market their books in countries such as France, Germany, and England. Harlequin’s unique brand of romance did quite well in Western Europe, but the company still struggled to implement their predominantly Caucasian stories in Eastern Europe and Asia. However, after some unique advertising ploys, which included giving the books away in Eastern Europe, American and British romances began to catch on in countries throughout the world. At one point in the mid-nineties, Harlequin romances were selling at the rate of 17,000 per day in Hungary. A booming time for the growing company, Harlequin managed to sell an average of 180 million books per year in the 1990s. Beginning in early 1993, Harlequin also dabbled in educational materials, opening a division called Children’s Supplementary Educational Publishing. Torstar eventually sold the division in late 1998. In 1996, the publishing house even tapped into the Internet, opening a website called Romance.net.

Throughout the late 1990s and into the new millennium, Harlequin has been rapidly expanding into the niche markets of romance novels. With the rapid increase in Christian book sales, the company opened a subdivision called Steeple Hill Press in 1998. Steeple Hill Press caters to a more conservative crowd, and faith is just as important as love in these novels. The new line has been one of Harlequin’s most profitable in recent years. Harlequin has also launched several mystery and suspense novels as well as a paranormal line of romances. A few years ago, in order to compete in the ever-widening market for “chick-lit,” Harlequin opened a division called Red Dress Ink. Red Dress Ink is aimed at career-women in their twenties and thirties, and although the novels are still romances at heart, they are not traditional reads for the genre. In early 2006, Harlequin started a new division aimed at minority women. With Kimani Press, Harlequin hopes to tap into the African-American market. Beginning in 2000, Harlequin has also made an attempt to reach women through online sources. The company renamed Romance.net and recreated the entire website. Now called eHarlequin.com, it is an online community that provides company information, author blogs, chat rooms, message boards, and even original stories. In keeping with the push for new technology, Harlequin also launched a new type of short story that can be downloaded and read from a cell phone.

In spite of all the changes and updates in recent years, some things at Harlequin have remained the same. One of Harlequin’s trademarks within the publishing industry is, and always has been, the way the company treats its authors. Harlequin Enterprises has always been open to working with unpublished authors and even posts submission guidelines on its website. In 2000 Harlequin employed roughly two thousand authors and cover artists, all working under pennames. An author’s penname is property of Harlequin, so if an author decides to leave the company for a more profitable contract, she looses her name, and in turn, most of her fan base. Harlequin authors, most of whom write part-time, are also under strict contracts. Authors are paid an advance of anywhere between two and fifteen thousand dollars and receive royalties as well. However, Harlequin has threatened authors with “work for hire” contracts. A work for hire contract means that the company pays a flat-fee for a book and the author receives no royalties. Organizations such as the Author’s Guild have investigated Harlequin’s questionable policies several times throughout the years.

In spite of its enormous size and seeming monopoly on the romance market, Harlequin began to show declining sales in 2003. Many experts believed that “chick-lit” novels and even the increase in Christian publishing were to blame. In spite of the decrease in profits, Harlequin still remained one of the most profitable companies in publishing history. In 2003, the company reported a gross profit of 124 million dollars and sold books in over a hundred countries. Through it all, Harlequin editors hoped for a happy ending. They did not take the sales drop lying down, and instead launched new lines, signed new authors, and changed-up the editorial ranks. In 2005, Harlequin began to show signs of improving and is currently on its way back to previous glory.

Over the years, Harlequin has been expected to fail several times. Yet, the publishing giant continues to thrive and expand, fighting each hardship and proving its staying power time and again. Even in today’s world, where women are more liberated than ever before, romance novels are in high demand. In fact, Harlequin’s company research shows that its average reader is a thirty-nine-year-old woman with a college degree and a job outside the home. This challenges the stereotypical image of the housewife who secretly enjoys erotic novels, and Harlequin intends to use this new research to its benefit. The company aims to launch several new lines that will appeal to a wide variety of women in the baby-boomer generation.

Harlequin Enterprises Limited has survived the changes in society and women for over half a century. It has proven its mettle in a genre that has been critically and socially rejected countless times over the years. Harlequin has become a name synonymous with romance and passion both in North America and around the world. Popular culture has adopted the company as the poster child for paperback romances and, like it or not, Harlequin is here to stay.